


Even in Death

by Kraotop



Category: Bleach, Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Gen, Original Character(s), Rukongai, Zaraki district, before canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-20
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-17 00:53:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 27,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29584737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kraotop/pseuds/Kraotop
Summary: The Gold Morning was over. But the final fate of Khepri was still to be determined. This time Contessa made a different choice, and in this parallel world Taylor Hebert died. But even in death there is seldom peace to be found.
Comments: 13
Kudos: 57





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This is a story that I posted on SB and FF for a while. I will be posting a chapter of it a day until it's catched up.  
> Thank you for clicking on this story and I hope you have as much fun reading it as I had writing it. :)

I was dead, shot in the head by Contessa.  
  
I did not begrudge her that decision, it had to be done. The monster I was becoming, it had to be put down. I wanted to believe that it was mostly to protect everyone else, but I knew that she wouldn’t have had any problem containing me.  
  
It was mercy. She saved me from the insanity that was slowly but surely clawing at my mind, making me lose one after the other all the things that made me human.  
  
But now all those changes didn’t matter one bit, all that I lost in my desperate bid to kill Scion was back. No, it would be more accurate that the influence of the passenger on my mind was gone. My mind felt lighter than ever. The feeling was difficult to describe, as if my death brought such finality to my journey that there was no place to have any regrets. In fact, it was a bit unsettling when I thought about it. Shouldn’t I feel some things towards my life? Regret for my actions? Worry for my friends? I left them behind me, there was no point thinking about it.  
  
I told those feelings to fuck off.  
  
My instincts were telling me to relax, I had no psychological baggage here, but my learned experience told me that was nonsense. I may have felt like everything was alright and that there was no point fretting about the past, but I knew what Strangers were capable of. Protocols I learned by heart and exercised many times went through my mind.  
  
I forced myself to be on edge. In some aspects Strangers were the hardest enemies to deal with, everything had to be put back into question. You couldn’t even trust yourself. In fact, even when trying I had a hard time bringing myself to care about what was my life. That was fine, fighting the effect head on was pointless most of the time, it was better to direct yourself into a state of mind unrelated to the effect in order to circumvent it and accomplish your objective. What I was feeling at the moment was wariness and defiance.  
  
In fact, was I even really dead? I _knew_ I was dead and currently in the afterlife but what did that even mean? I _knew_ that before I even looked around or bothered thinking about it.  
  
I finally looked at my surroundings.  
  
It was _white_. No walls, no ceiling, no floors. Under me, a great number of butterflies were flying upwards. But I wasn’t alone. There were queues of hundreds of peoples, with more appearing from nowhere to put themselves in line, apparently waiting their turn for something.  
  
They were wearing plain Japanese robes. In fact I was wearing the same thing. And my arm was back. Whatever was behind this had me healed.  
  
Maybe I could talk to one of the others.  
  
“Excuse me, do you know where we are?” I asked to the first man that passed next to me. He looked at me slightly confused.  
  
“Uh...the afterlife. No?” he said, confused.  
  
What the fuck? I could tell he was speaking a foreign language, probably Japanese, and I _understood_ him. I didn’t know the first thing about this language and despite that I could tell what he was saying. No, I wasn’t actually deciphering what he was saying, instead I implicitly understood the meaning of his words. No language barrier then. It was very subtle, someone that wasn’t already looking for such anomalies wouldn’t even notice they were speaking different languages. In fact my interlocutor didn’t even flinch at my use of English.  
  
Speaking of.  
  
He was starting to stare at me. Looked like I spent too long just thinking to myself. So I continued talking.  
  
“But how do you know that?” I asked.  
  
“I...don’t know.” The poor man looked more and more confused as time went on. I was completely lost now and panic was starting to set in.  
  
“It IS the afterlife” This voice spoke with complete assurance. A woman had approached us while we were talking. She must have heard what we were saying. I simply raised an inquisitive eyebrow. She explained. “I didn’t come here immediately after I died, I’ve been a ghost for several days, the Shinigami told me that I stayed due to my attachments or something.”  
  
“Shinigami?” The name felt weird. I could tell the literal translation was “ _God of Death”,_ but it was just that: literal. There was a weight behind it. It felt like calling it by any other term than _Shinigami_ was simply incorrect.  
  
“Yeah. He gave more details situation and said that he was bringing me to the afterlife. Then he did some weird thing with his sword and _Poof_ here I am.” I had no reason to doubt her words, as ludicrous as they seemed. At the very least the woman certainly believed it. But a _ghost_ of all things, and it seemed it happened before she met that Shinigami.   
  
“Well in any case, I’m going in this line. Not that there’s something better to do anyway. You coming big guy?” The man gave a nod and the two of them went at the back of one of the dozen lines of people.  
  
Now that I was alone, my mind was churning with doubts and apprehension.  
  
In my few years as a parahuman I met all kind of extraordinary phenomenons, but at least I had the explanation that they were due to the fragments of an eldritch god-like alien being, nothing outright mystical. Breaking the laws of physics was one thing, claiming that ghosts were a thing and that there was an afterlife was another.  
  
Whatever, no sense staying here. There literally was nothing here to do besides getting in the line and see what happened. I joined one of the files at random. It was long, there were at minimum a hundred people before me, but at least it advanced reasonably fast.  
  
Soon enough I arrived near the end and I could see what was going on. There was a man in a very concealing white robe at the end, his face completely masked by a black fabric held by a small weird hat. He talked a bit to the man at the front of the line and handed him some sort of ticket. He disappeared in a small white flash.  
  
I doubted that he was dead, what would have been the point to bring us here? Maybe some kind of teleportation. My immediate goals didn’t change much. I had to reach the masked man, and then I’d chose my course of action.  
  
Finally it was my turn.  
  
“Welcome to Soul Society, departed soul. I shall guide you to your new existence in this world.” The man spoke with a horribly bored voice. It was obvious that he had to endlessly repeat the same phrase to everyone, I wasn’t going to blame his lack of passion in this kind of job. But his low of morale could wait, I had questions.  
  
“Excuse me, but I hoped you could tell me where we are?”  
  
“My apologies but it is not my role to inform you. Please take this Soul Pass.” He didn’t want to waste time on me, as there were literally hundreds of other people waiting for their own Pass. Understandable. But I never was known to be reasonable.  
  
“I won’t take the Soul Pass until my questions are answered. At the very least give me the bare bones. What is this place and where is the Soul Pass going to bring me?” The man mulled it over for two seconds, before sighing in annoyance. By his tone I guessed I was hardly the first to waste his time.  
  
“Fine. You currently are currently in Hengoku, a transient place between the living world and Soul Society. The Soul Pass will bring you somewhere in there depending on your time and place of death. Now will you take the damn Pass? I have other souls to guide.” So the whole purpose of the place was to spread us around this Soul Society. I briefly considered knocking him out to go search for an exit, but I squashed the idea. What would I do if there were no physical exit to the place and you instead had to teleport to leave. And that’s not taking into account his colleagues or potential guards, I was unarmed.  
  
No, the only thing I could do was to take the damn Pass.  
  
The thing was completely white and smooth, but as soon as I took it in my hand writings began to appear. It was written in some foreign characters, I think those were called kanji. Like with earlier, I never learned how to read Japanese but I still understood what it meant.  
  
And as light started to envelop me, I did my best to commit the name of my destination to memory.  
  
North Rukongai 80th district : Zaraki. 

  
  



	2. District 80

I did not live a very long life, but I could say with assurance that I went through some of the worst places on Earth. I traversed the city of Ellisburg, a place humanity had given up to mutated monsters controlled by a mad man. I infiltrated Cauldron’s headquarters’ depths, taken over by the organization's own twisted experiments.

And then there was Brockton Bay. What happened there hurt me deeply, it was my home after all, but even looking at it objectively it was the worst. Endbringers were more akin to natural disasters than proper attacks, more than the human cost it was the indiscriminate damage to infrastructure that was to be feared. People came back to ruined homes, no electricity, no running water.

Desperation pushes people to criminality, survival above morals. Endbringer touched zones quickly became lawless. And Brockton Bay had been a gang infested cesspool before Leviathan. Not to mention the chaos the Slaughterhouse left in their wake.

This place made Brockton Bay look like an ad for a seaside resort.

The only buildings here were rundown wooden shacks, the few people who were walking the dirt roads covered with a mixture of mud and blood were all bare footed, covered in grime and had some manner of injury. Every few second a pained and panicked scream could be heard in the distance. There were a few corpses here and there in the open that nobody seemed to care about. And of course, the air was pungent with the odor of blood and shit.

This was the supposed afterlife?

What amounted to little more than a slum? Scratch that, calling this place a slum would be giving it too much credit. In slums there was at least a sense a community in shared hardships. This was… was there even a word for it?

I had been there for 30 minutes. I walked the muddy path, my clean white clothes a stark contrast to the other residents. It attracted attention. I could feel the eyes around me sizing me up as if I was a piece of meat. I gave back a long practiced and tested intimidating look. Most of them lost interest, like predators who found their prey too feisty to bother hunting.

Yes, that was it. It could barely be called civilization. I was in the wild.

And I was prey.

What’s more, I had no real way to defend myself. No weapons, no hideout, and like I surmised earlier, no powers. I didn't feel any bug anywhere and some people passed close enough to discount the idea that I retained my last set of powers.

Damn it!

I gave everything to save the world, even my sanity. In the end I welcomed death, hoping to have some peace from my regrets and misery. And this is where I ended up? A place where I would have to fight every second for my life?

…

…

Perhaps this was Hell. A place where only the worst humanity has to offer could thrive. I certainly did enough to deserve it.

God damnit, this wasn’t the moment to get mopey! People were starting to eye me again, sensing my weakness like sharks smelling blood.

I couldn’t afford to be like that right now, I had to keep my head in the game.

The Soul Pass said this was the 80th district of the North Rukongai, which meant there had to be at the very least 79 others. There was a good chance civilization was properly maintained somewhere. 

If this Soul Society was divided in districts there had to be some sort of governing body that divided the territory in this manner. I had to be in the far outskirts.

Then my objective was simple: find civilization.

Far easier said than done. First of all, I didn-

My train of thought was interrupted when my arm was grabbed and I was pulled in a small passage between two shacks. My back was pressed against a wall and a small makeshift stone knife was put against my throat.

“Heheh. Don’t move or you know what’s going to happen.”

I had a hard time assessing my surprise opponent, his self-satisfied face taking up over 50% of my vision, but I could see that he was quite muscular, and the scars on his face told me that he had at least some experience in fighting, though I doubted he was formally trained.

“Finding complete newbies like you is rare you know, doesn’t take long before someone gets to them. But today’s my lucky day!”

His rugged hand went to cup my face. His frankly horrible breath nearly made my gag.

“Don’t worry, you’re going to enjoy this as much as I will.”

His hand strayed to the collar of my robes, his intent obvious. It didn’t matter. If his intent was to rape me or merely to mug me, the end result would be the same. I may not have my bugs, but I didn’t train tirelessly for two years to become a defenseless victim the moment I was depowered.  
Either he would be on the ground, or I would be dead.

I grabbed both his hands and pulled them down, kneeing him in the groin in the same instant. 

Following that I grabbed his hand and performed a basic arm lock. His knife fell to the ground. His arm immobilized behind his back, I kicked him behind the knees, forcing him down. 

“Alright, now that we are in a more appropriate position, we should talk a bit. If you don’t answer my questions, I break your arm. Got it?”

“Fuck off bitch!” I put more force in the joint lock. I could hear a small whine coming from him as he tried to hold back his scream behind clenched teeth.

“Last chance. Talk or your arm goes, and I won’t stop there. I will continue asking until you’re out of functioning appendages.” 

“Don’t bother. I’ve been here long enough to know how it works.”

Suddenly I was thrown off his back as he screamed in pain. He had willingly broken his arm to escape. He quickly drew a rusty knife from his robe and charged me.

I had but a moment to react. I grabbed the weapon he dropped earlier, ducked under his swing, and plunged it in his throat.

His spasming body fell on me, covering me in his blood. I pushed him off me as he choked on his own knife until he finally stopped moving.

I couldn’t stay here, someone was bound to come see what was happening. I ripped the knife from the guy’s corpse. It was incredibly crude, the indents on it clearly indicated it had been made by simply mashing two rocks together at an angle, but at least it had a wooden handle covered in cloth for a better grip. It wasn’t much but it was better than the iron one, it was so rusty that I wasn’t sure it wouldn’t break at the first stab.

I stood up.

I probably should have been thinking about how up close and personal this kill was. I was used to fight at a distance using my bugs, having someone I stabbed to death bleed all over me should have at least been rattling.

But honestly, it barely registered.

The only thing I thought about was his face as he rushed me. It wasn’t the vindictive look of someone who wanted to get payback for a humiliation. It was the look of a cornered animal, one who had been ready to chew off its own leg to avoid what he thought was an inevitable death.

I hated that he was probably right.

I had been walking in the same direction for 10 hours now and there was no change in scenery.  
Thankfully after my first fight I only had been attacked 6 times. I supposed that people were a bit more wary of me now that my white robes were covered in blood

More importantly, how big was this place? It wasn’t as if I had wandered aimlessly, I picked South since I was supposedly in the North of Rukongai and did my best to stay in that direction, I should have reached something by now.

But there was no change, just some more bodies in the street and the tang of blood in the air.

Additionally, the sun was starting to set, I would need to find some shelter soon. I didn’t want to be out in the open when the more devious ones would start getting bolder.

I couldn’t pick just any house though, barging in on some random nutjob was the last thing I wanted. I would have to look for an abandoned one, a place dilapidated enough to suggest no one inhabited it.

It took me about 20 minutes, but I found something sufficient for my needs. It was out of the way enough that few people would stumble upon it. It was pretty shitty, no windows and some of the wood was straight up rotten, in fact the door didn’t look like it had been opened in years, I was pretty sure the moment I would touch it it would crumble to the ground.

It wasn’t much, but it was my best shot. I approached the door. The grass in front of it was undisturbed, a good sign but I wouldn’t take any chance. 

I gently slid the door open, my knife at the ready. What greeted me was a small empty room. 

Nothing special at all. There was only one other room. I slowly approached it, the floor slightly groaning under my weight. 

As soon as I entered it, someone yelled and lunged at me. I dodged my assailant on instinct and quickly pinned him to the ground. I readied my knife to stab, no time for hesitation, I had seen what the people here saw that as. 

“N-No! Please w-wait don’t kill me!”

His panicked words made me stop in my track. It was the first time since I got here that someone had bothered to plead for their life. I looked at him.

He was small, young, perhaps around 14. But more importantly his robes were near immaculate. If I understood the mechanics of this place, people were sent seemingly at random here in the white robes they had just gotten. This kid’s were clean, he couldn’t have been here for long.

I looked in his eyes. He was completely terrified. Not the feral sort you saw around here, just a fucking kid about to be killed.

God, had I really been about to murder a 14 year old boy?

I got off him and sat down next to the wall.

I took a deep breath. The kid still looked terrified but at least he wasn’t anymore in mortal danger. I had to break the ice eventually, we couldn’t stay under the same roof and utterly distrust each other.

“I’m Taylor, what’s your name?” 

“I-I-I’m Isamu Kodama. W-W-What are you going t-to do to me?” The poor kid was still shaking like a leaf. 

“Look, I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to stay here for the night, alright? Nothing more.” I tried to be as placating as I could. It didn’t seem to be working much, but at least he was now more wary than panicked.

“Alright, but s-stay on the other side of room okay?” Fine with me, if he needed some space to feel even remotely safe, I wasn’t going to deny him.

So we stayed like that in silence. 10 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour until the sun completely disappeared and the light of the moon was the only thing left.

That’s when Isamu finally started talking again.

“I-I never saw someone like you before. Where are you from?” What did he mean by that?

“I’m from Brockton Bay, it’s on the East coast of the United States.”

Silence followed for a full minute.

“Uuuh…where is that exactly?”

….

….

What?

Okay. Calm down. Maybe he lived in some isolated backwater place.

“And you, where are you from?”

“I’m from Kyoto.”

Alright then. Maybe I was in an alternate reality where the USA never existed.

“What exactly did you mean when you said you never met someone like me?” He looked somewhat embarrassed.

“Well, I admit I had never seen or even heard of people with such strange features.” I didn’t like where this was going.

“You didn’t die long ago right? What year was it?” I said perhaps a bit too forcefully: Isamu looked more and more worried.

“Uh-I think we were in the fifth year of the Enbun era. Why?” I had no idea when that was.  
Well whatever, the when didn’t really matter for now. I was without a doubt in a parallel universe, or perhaps this “afterlife” encompassed all worlds. No, if that were the case there would have been far more people in Hengoku.

So parallel universe it was. Maybe this was a universe where history was delayed, or perhaps Europe had been obliterated by a meteor before the settlers came, I had no way to find out at the moment. I would have to deal with it when the time came. 

“So, are you like a foreign kunoichi? You certainly know how to fight, although you don’t look like you’d be good at seduct-wait, sorry! I apologize! I didn’t mean that you were-uh you know…”

I sighed.


	3. Exploration

“We need to spar.” I said.

“What ? Why ?”

We only had met yesterday but I could tell Isamu was a nice kid. He could be a bit meek, but once he got a bit of momentum he became quite the motormouth, it could be pretty annoying but it was also a bit endearing. But most importantly he was genuine, he wore his emotions on his sleeve and I could tell he wasn’t going to shaft me unless his hand was forced. The fact he was for now the only human being I met that wasn’t actively hostile also helped. I wouldn’t let him go to his death.

“We can’t stay holed up in here forever, at the very least we need to explore our surroundings. So I need to know if you’d be able to hold your own in a fight.”

“I-I don’t know. I mean, I fought once or twice before but that’s it.”

“That’s why we need to spar. Now come on, don’t worry about hurting me, I’m confident I can easily handle you, give it your best.”

He hesitated for a few seconds before making his decision. He ran at me while winding up his arm for a punch. What followed was perhaps one the wimpiest, most telegraphed, and overall terrible punch I had ever seen. I was pretty sure that if it actually landed his wrist would have received far more damage than my face. Obviously I didn’t let it reach its target, it passed by my head harmlessly and continued a bit on its track. Now that he was overextended, I grabbed his arm and swiped his legs.

He landed unceremoniously on the floor.

“You told me you fought a few times before.” I said sternly.

“Yeah, I didn’t say I won.” I was willing to bet they were more one-sided beat-downs than real fights, but at least he was willing to fight, he did try to jump me when we met. 

I sighed.

“Alright, I’ll at least teach you how to throw a punch.” I said as he was getting back up. 

“First, put your arms in this position.” I put my arms in a standard guard stance.

What followed were three horribly frustrating hours where I tried to impart the basics of fighting into a kid who could probably get mauled by a toddler. Indeed, if there was something I learned about Isamu it was that he had no natural talent for hand to hand combat whatsoever. 

Nonetheless, it may have been hard but I was now confident he could punch someone without hurting himself now, and put up a halfway decent guard.

That was the bare minimum, but it would have to do. I had plans for today.

Once he had recovered enough I started explaining.

“Like I said earlier we can’t stay here forever, this place is a death trap. We need to get out of this district to find one more civilized. I want to go and see if we can find any exit to this place.” 

“Nice, I-I agree. The furthest away from this place I am, the happier I’ll be.”

“You’re coming with me.”

“Wait what? Why? You saw how much I suck at fighting! I’d get killed out there, it’s better that I stay inside, no?” he protested.

“I can’t leave you alone here. If someone comes while I’m away, you’re dead. We will certainly have to fight if you come with me, but I taught you enough to at least buy the time needed for me to rescue you.” I explained. “I’m not leaving your side until you’re good enough to win a fight.”

“Oh-uh-alright...” He was worried of course, I couldn’t blame him for that. But he needed to get out too, the fighting experience he would inevitably need wasn’t something I could give him in the shack (I wasn’t calling this thing a house).

We left the place near noon.

The roads were still as shitty as yesterday, but at the very least people were less likely to attack now that there were two of us. The only problem was that Isamu was constantly fidgeting under the stares of the locals. I couldn’t exactly blame him for that, but it needed fixing, so I went into a small alley out of sight to talk to him.

“You need to calm down Isamu, everyone can see you’re scared.” I said.

“What?! Of course I’m scared! Have you seen those guys? I’m pretty sure every single one of them were contemplating at least a few dozen ways to kill the both of us!”

“That is why can’t afford to look scared.” I explained. “Confidence is a strength in and of itself. If people believe you are confident in your strength they will at the very least hesitate.” 

“But I am weak! You saw how terrible I am at fighting. If someone decides to attack I’m dead anyway… I should have stayed in the house. At least then I wouldn’t have been a burden...” His speech afterwards devolved in a spiral of self depreciating mumble. I put a stop to it.

“Look, when push comes to shove, I’ll make sure you survive. But right now, you need to follow what I tell you to do, alright? Do you think I’ve always been as good a fighter as I am? Hell no. When I was your age I’m not sure I would have even been able to beat you.” That was a lie. “But it only took me a few years to become who I am today.” I calmly explained.

“Dead?” Smartass.

“No. What I mean is that I will teach you to make sure you get as good as me. But for that I need you to do what I say. Understood?” I tried to speak gently but firmly. No sense to bully him into compliance, I needed him to respect and follow me.

He nodded

“Alright…fine. I’ll…do my best.” He said weakly.

He still seemed uncertain, but it would do. We resumed our walk through Zaraki. This time Isamu was trying his best to remain dignified. And failing. You could tell a mile away it was only a facade. But I wasn’t going to correct him again. I didn’t expect him to pull off that kind of poker face instantly, the fact that was trying was enough. It would come with time when his confidence would start to be real.

Considering I went South yesterday, my goal was to continue on this path until I found something worthwhile or we were short on time. Having a base of operations, as shoddy as it was, was something important and I needed to keep in mind the time it would take to get back. Maybe it was foolish. There was also merit in moving continuously, especially since there was nothing to the shack in the first place. But I simply didn’t feel safe leaving what we already had. 

I was pretty sure Lisa would have picked apart this choice before explaining to me why my various biases were clouding my judgement in that particular regard. I wouldn’t even have been able to get mad. 

I missed her.

Sure, Brockton Bay had been terrible but at the very least I hadn’t been alone. Isamu was nice, but he was more of a desperate bid to find a semblance of stability than anything. It didn’t help that this place showed scenes that could easily compete with the Slaughterhouse’s once in a while. It seemed some people fancied themselves “artists” around here. I just hoped my skills would be enough to fend them off.

Thankfully after about 2 hours of walk we had hit something: a 3 meters high stone wall that stretched out as far as I could see. It was near immaculate, which sharply contrasted to its surroundings. That was good. Very good. It was the first stone construction not in disrepair that I found. That meant that there were people that had made this wall and maintained it. And they were presumably on the other side.

Now all I had to do was cross it.

“AAAH!” Isamu screamed in pain.

I turned to him. He was clutching his hand as if it had been burned, his face scrunched up in pain. I took a look at his injury. That was no burn, it was as if the first few layers of skin had simply disappeared.

“What did you do?” I said urgently.

“I-I just touched the wall! Nothing else I swear!” he said in a panicked voice.

I picked a piece of wood on the ground and touched the wall with it. The surface of wood in contact with the stone disintegrated, and fast enough that by steadily pushing it I could see it shorten to half its size in a few seconds.

Fantastic.

I left my stick and went to bandage Isamu’s hand. I had picked up some pieces of cloth from my victims yesterday. It wasn’t sterile gauze, but it would at least limit the chance of infection.

“Are you alright?” I asked.

“Yes…I’m fine. What was that? I…I’ve been burned before. I died in a fire. But this…” He looked troubled. But dead in a fire? As far as ways to die went, this was quite far on the painful end. To die like that at his age… I wouldn’t pry.

“The wall disintegrates everything it touches. I don’t think you would have ever met something like that before.” I answered. That dubious privilege was reserved for those deep into the cape life. 

“Disintegrate? What does that mean?” He asked.

“Reduced to dust. Imagine all the components of you hand, beyond even what you can see, being pulled apart. That’s what happened.”

He shivered.

I turned my attention back to the wall. We obviously couldn’t just climb it. It would also eat through any kind of object we would use. There were other options though but I wouldn’t take any risk. My experience told me to never take chances with shit like that unless you didn’t have a choice. If this wall was made to deter anyone from climbing it, a reasonable guess considering it disintegrated trespassers, why would the builders have ignored other ways to cross?

I picked up a rock and threw it to other side of the wall.

It disappeared in mid-air. Just above it.

I could guess it would extend below the ground too.

Was there really no exit?

I climbed the closest shack.

The wall stretched out beyond the horizon in a slight outward curve. An absolutely gigantic circle. And we were outside.

Inside, there were more slums. As far as the eye could see. There seemed to be no escape from it. Was there even a way to go further in?

I climbed down. Isamu was waiting for me, still holding his bandaged hand.

“So, what did you see?” he asked.

“Nothing new beyond the wall. There’s just more of this.” I made a general gesture towards where we came from. 

I considered our options. We could follow the wall to try and find a gate to go towards the center of this place or stay in this district. To be fair that wasn’t a real choice. No way I was going to stay here for the rest of my unlife. 

We needed more information on our surroundings. But how to get it? 

“Well well well well well…what do we have here? A bitch and her pet.”

I turned around. Three thugs were approaching. They didn’t look like much but they were armed with knives. 

“Hey Jin.” Called the tallest of the bunch “What do we do with bitches?”

“We break them.” Answered the named Jin with a raspy voice. 

“Isamu, stay behind me.” I ordered. He obeyed.

“Ooooh, look at that! Mommy wants to protect her baby chick.” They laughed. “Don’t worry we’ll make sure he is alive long enough to watch.” Absolutely revolting.

I just stood there, feigning restrained terror. 

Jin was the one on front and he decided to get up close and personal. His weapon was sheathed on his belt as he was confident of his superiority. 

He grabbed my collar and went to punch me.

I deflected his punch in the direction of his body, picked up with my other arm the knife I hid beneath the belt of my robes and plunged it in his throat.

Several gasps later and he was dead on the ground, or soon to be.

His companions were slack jawed. They clearly didn’t expect me to kill the man, never mind so fast. And then they…laughed?

“Bwahahaha!! Did you see that?! That was awesome! Jin-heh-just went like he was hot shit, and she-hehehe-just killed him like-snrk-that!” The tallest looked like he was barely holding it together. The other one, a small stocky guy was just smiling, trying to stifle his laughter.

“You know what?” The tall one continued. “I like you! Jin was getting on my nerves lately anyway. I was probably going to kill him one of these days.”

“I thought everyone got on your nerves.” His comrade pitched in.

“Well yeah Juro, but that doesn’t mean I hate everyone equally you little shit!”   
Juro rolled his eyes in response.

“Anyway.” The neurotic one continued. “My name’s Arai, nice to meet you! And you are?”

I debated in my mind the merits of telling this guy my real name when my thoughts were interrupted a few instants later.

“Hey! I asked you a question dipshit! I just started liking you, don’t make me regret it!” he insisted. 

“I’m Taylor.” No real reason to hide my real name anyway, it was not like I had a secret identity to protect.

“Nice to meet you Taylor! Now why don’t you ditch this worthless kid and join us? It’ll be fun!” 

I looked behind me. Isamu was staring at the pool of blood near the dead thug, seemingly in shock.

“No.” My answer was without hesitation. No way I was going to join a pack of murderhobos. I got enough of that with the Nine.

“Big mistake girly. You let down a great opportunity.” He replied.

He drew a knife and nodded at his comrade who went to circle us, probably trying to get to Isamu. 

As Arai started approaching I drew another knife from beneath my robes and readied myself.  
He started running. He was fast. In a few seconds he was on me. I couldn’t backpedal or I would inevitably hit the wall, so I dodged to the side. 

I had never been that good with knives, preferring the less lethal option of a baton, and I was regretting it. Arai was good. His technique was pretty rough, the mark of someone who had to learn on the fly, but effective nonetheless. He was extremely aggressive, forcing me to constantly move, but I had to be careful of not getting too far from Isamu or the other guy would get to him while he was defenseless. 

I took a cut on my thigh, then on my left arm, blocked another swipe, attempted a body shot. 

He finally relented a bit. 

I couldn’t afford to let him dictate the tempo of the fight. This time I went on the offensive.

My technique was not as rough, but sloppy. I tried to compensate by preventing him from attacking altogether, keeping him on the defensive.

It didn’t work that well.

“Hahahaha you got spirit girly! I think I’ll show leniency and give you another chance to change your mind when you’re bleeding out on the ground!!” He said joyfully, smiling all teeth.

I didn’t reply, I didn’t want to waste my breath on banter in a situation like that.

We continued this dance, a few shallow cuts exchanged and then we stopped. Gauged each other, thinking about which one of us was going to make the first move.

And then I heard a cry.

“You little bastard! I’m going to kill you!”

I turned my head to see Isamu on the ground, the other thug had a knife in the shoulder and was on top, punching Isamu repeatedly.

Fuck! I had been too distracted to notice that.

And now I was too distracted to notice Arai attacking. I turned just in time to barely be able to dodge the stab, leaving a deep gouge in my side rather than a full-on disembowelment.

I grabbed his extended arm and pulled, allowing me to knee him in the chest.

I then kicked him away and ran towards Isamu with the few seconds I gained.

Isamu was desperately trying to protect his face while the thug was wailing on him.

I picked the brute up by the neck of his rags and threw him to the side.

He fell face first on the wall.

“AAaaaAaAAArrnNHhhgrrRh!!!!!” 

The scream was absolutely horrific. White smoke was flowing from where his face and hands were disintegrating. 

In the end he fell to the side and somehow managed with the last of his strength to slightly roll away. Despite the fact that his arms were reduced to bloody stumps and his face had been shorn away, he was still breathing.

Isamu threw up.

For my part I had gotten used to that kind of thing, so I focused back on my previous opponent. 

Arai was standing in place, seemingly fascinated by the scene.

I wasn’t going to let him get back to his sense.

I rushed him.

The moment he saw me he prepared himself to stab when I came in range, and I did the same.

He blocked my swipe and I grabbed the hand he was going to stab with. I impacted with him and we fell to the ground.

We both lost our knives and the fight degenerated into a mess of limbs. Both of us trying to gain the upper hand on the ground. 

It was dirty. Barely any skill was involved. I scratched his face, he bit my arm, I threw dust in eyes. It was just a mess. 

I managed to get on top of him. 

I hit him. 

Again.

Again.

Again.

Again.

Again.

His face was bloodied beyond recognition. His nose broken beyond healing. Blood was flowing from several places where the skin had simply given in. I doubted he was even able to see in this state.

In an act of desperation, he managed to grab a rock and smash it on my injury.

I fell to the side, surprised by the sudden pain.

I recovered quickly but he tried to go on the offensive.

He tried. Severely concussed, nearly blind, there was little he could do but crawl on me, desperately reaching for my throat.

I grabbed the rock he used and hit his head. He went down.

“pleaaase” he rasped out.

I ended his misery with another hit.

It was done.

I slowly got my breath back, letting myself wind down.

I got up and picked up both our knives before going back to Isamu.

He was sitting on the ground, clutching his head.

That had probably been the first time he had seen someone die.

I knelt down to his level.

“Isamu.” I called. No response. “Isamu, show me your face.” I insisted.

Slowly, he relented. The brute had done a number on him. Thankfully his nose had not been broken, but he would have a lot more than a black eye. Worse even, his eyes had a faraway look. Tear tracks marked the blood on his face.

I gently tried to clean his wounds with what I had.

“How?” he asked.

“Hm?”

“How do you do it?”

“Do what?”

“Do what you did. You didn’t even flinch when you killed that man. When that guy was burned by the wall you just…stood there and went to the next one. It took all I had just to stab someone. Just…how?”

I knew what he was talking about. In my beginnings I needed bugs to hide my nervousness. But over time it just wasn’t necessary anymore. I grew used to approach those things matter-of-factly. 

“You just get used to it.” I said truthfully.

“Get used to killing? That’s…terrible.” He looked down.

“Yes. It is. But sometimes you don’t have choice. Sometimes it’s kill or be killed.” I said carefully. 

“You…killed a lot of people…didn’t you?” he correctly guessed. “Did you always need to?”

A very hard question. I indeed killed a lot of people. Most of them were the Slaughterhouse clones, ans of course I didn’t regret killing them for a second. There were also the death I caused as Khepri. I refused to admit I had been responsible for that, or to think about it for that matter. I did what I had to do. But three others came to mind. Did I really need to kill them?

“I…Yes, there had been no other option. Look, I’m not asking you to be able to kill on command, but you need to be able to do it in time of need. You will look back on it, perhaps regret it, but at that moment remind yourself that you had no choice. It was your life or theirs.”

It was harsh, and probably bullshit, but it would make him feel better. And when the time came, when he would be directly responsible for someone’s death, the blow would be lessened.

I got up and extended my arm to him.

“Alright, come on. We’re going back.”

He grabbed my arm and I pulled him up. He wiped his eyes with his sleeve.

“Shouldn’t we…bury them?” he asked.

“Do you really think that they’re worth it? Besides, aren’t we already dead?” I said half jokingly.

“Heh…Alright, let’s go…”

The trip back was strangely uneventful.

The next one wouldn’t be. 

Neither the one after.

In the distance an inhuman scream could be heard.


	4. Gossip

This schedule became routine. Wake up, train, explore, sleep, repeat. It was simple but effective. I was getting used to the layout of the place while Isamu got stronger.

The third day, he killed his first man. Someone thought we would make a good target at night. Isamu was the one guarding while I slept, so he acted. When I woke up to the ruckus, I found him next to the body, a knife in the throat of the thug. 

As I hoped, he didn’t break down, he was simply quiet and a bit distant for a while. Just to be sure I elected that we take the day off and stay at the shack. He needed the time to digest what he did.

The day after, he killed another one. It went smoothly.

After a week I finally felt hunger. I hadn’t noticed it’s absence until then. I guessed some basic things, like my lack of glasses, could easily go unnoticed. Thankfully, I didn’t need much, a few fruits sufficed to satiate me for days.

I guessed it made some sense for bodily needs to be a bit pointless without a physical body, which wasn’t even true as hunger was still a thing. Same for sleep. We needed it but not as much as when we were alive. Four hours at most. That made sleeping in shifts with only two of us actually viable. 

Still, despite Isamu being apparently able to take care of himself, I wasn’t able to sleep soundly. The ambient danger was always in the back of my mind and it was quite hard to fully relax in these circumstances.

That’s why when the door of the shack opened and heavy footsteps followed I awoke. Alert, I silently got up and picked one of the better weapons we had found, a well maintained and fairly long knife. 

Where was Isamu? He should have been in the shack with me. Was he already dead?

The footsteps were approaching, I had hidden myself in the blind spot Isamu had taken advantage of the first time we met. The similarity between these two moments wasn’t lost on me. 

In a few seconds someone was going to pass the entrance of the room, and I was going to jump them before they jumped me.

A foot landed on the threshold, half of it visible.   
Just one more step.

Time was stretching as my focus was entirely on the timing of my strike.

The figure shambled into view.

I ran at them, pure instinct guiding my feet. In the second I took to get to them I recognized one of the faces. I couldn’t cancel my momentum so I bowled them over as I attempted to direct my knife away from everyone’s flesh. 

Once I managed to disentangle myself from the mess of limbs we found ourselves in I put myself in a fighting position.

“Wo cam don mi Tayor!” Isamu cried out in a nearly unintelligible manner. It was hard to focus on details on a night as dark as this one, but he looked somewhat haggard and his face was bloody as well as swollen. The one who accompanied him looked fine in comparison, she would be sporting a black eye in the morning, but she didn’t look like she had been run over by a truck. She was rather plain looking, but the unmaintained hair and probably never washed clothes certainly didn’t help.

“Shut up. I’ll deal with you later.” I responded harshly. He would be explaining himself, but the intruder got priority. “And who are you exactly?”

“I’m Naoko, no last name, just Naoko. Look, I don’t want any trouble, I just came to bring back this moron, nothing more.” Moron?

“What the hell did you do Isamu?” I had a feeling I wasn’t going to like his explications.

“Wel you kno, I wa gaïn ze houfe wen I ear homeone houtin. Ho I peeh ouside an I see he gedin assaued. I ouln’t ust eave er aone!” Despite the fact his words were near incomprehensible I got the gist of it: he went to play hero. Alone.

That was insanely reckless, even for his usual inexperienced self. He could have easily woken me up to deal with the issue, despite my ruthless streak I wasn’t the type to just watch as someone was getting assaulted and he knew it. It wouldn’t have been the first time. Something must have pushed him to act alone. I didn’t know what, I wasn’t a psychologist, but this needed to never happen again.

“You fucking idiot! Don’t you remember where we are? This could have easily been a trap! Did you even consider that possibility before jumping in? You were lucky Naoko here didn’t just run away!” I said as sternly as possible. My eyes were boring into him while his were desperately trying to avoid so much as glancing as me. I sighed.“Next time wake me up. Going into this without backup was nothing more than suicidal.”

“Bu… washn a rap in ze en, I bea thos guys.” He replied meekly.

“No, I beat those guys, you were a good distraction though.” This time it was Naoko who spoke. Isamu looked like someone crushed in front of his eyes every single one of is hopes and dreams, although I had to admit it was hard to tell with how swollen his features were getting.

I snorted. Our guest was slightly startled and Isamu was looking at me as if I had grown a second head. Why did they act so surprised? 

I sat down, relishing in the fall of the tension.

“I’m Taylor Hebert and this idiot over there is Isamu Kodama.” I said. “You can stay for a bit if you want, that’s the least we can do after you brought him back.” It would be nice to have another person to talk to. Isamu was nice, but he was in no state to have any decent conversation.

The question of course remained over whether I could trust her long term or not. Perhaps she was a serial killer who preyed on the less aggressive residents, earning their trust before stabbing them in the back. Wouldn’t be that much of a stretch around here considering there was a guy crucifying people after making them eat their own spleen running around. In any case, despite my suspicions, I wasn’t going to act on them alone. I’d give her the benefit of the doubt, at least for tonight.

“So...how long have you been here?” Wow, great attempt at small talk Taylor. You could feel the inhumane social skills a mile away. Luckily, she didn’t care.

“I’ve been in Zaraki since I was 3 years old. And I’m 16, so yeah around 13 years. And you, you’re souls from the living world, three weeks at most or you would have had to change clothes.” she said, clearly proud of her own deductions. Something in what she said made my mind click.

“You specified that we were souls from the living world, does that mean that there are some who are not?”

“What? Of course! I was born here after all. Well, not here here, surviving in Zaraki as a baby is completely impossible, I was born in the 60th district Shironeko.” That meant that there were indeed some populations dynamics despite people being spread randomly around the place. I had briefly fostered the idea that the repartition wasn’t as random as they said and that it worked on some kind of karma system, I would certainly deserve to be in this hell, but Isamu threw a wrench into it. Still a part of what she said worried me.

“If your parents had to flee to here, I really don’t want to find out how bad Shironeko is.”

“You kidding?” She scoffed. “Shironeko is a paradise compared to Zaraki. My family didn’t flee, they were kicked out again and again until they hit the furthest edge of Rukongai. The fact they managed to be banned from 20 districts in a few years says quite a lot on the kind of persons they were. I tried sneaking back of course, but the only gate towards district 79 is constantly guarded. No one wants the trash in their neighborhood, as shitty as it is.” That answered a lot of questions. Namely why this place had such a high concentration of maniacs. 

The problem was that I didn’t want to stay here, and although I didn’t find the gate she spoke of, the fact that it was guarded spoke of some manner of organization. Depending on how good the guard was, we could be chased even after getting past the gate. I couldn’t really know until I checked it for myself, we would have to cross that bridge once we got to it.

“Wait a minute.” she narrowed her eyes, inspecting me. “I didn’t recognize you before, but that dress, those features, the way you carry yourself…are you that Red Lady everyone is talking about?!” Great, don’t tell me I had gotten famous somehow, as if I needed a target on my back in this situation.

“A ed ady?” helpfully asked Isamu.

“Yeah the Red Lady. Everyone’s talking about that bitch with strange features who always struts around in plain daylight like she owns the place. Some guys tried to put her in her place, they only served to color her white robes red.” she revealed in a low tone, as if I was some kind of campfire story. “They say she always makes sure to put a new coat of fresh blood everyday on her clothes, just to make sure everyone knows who she is.” God damn it.

“God damn it.”

“YES!!! I was right! You ARE the Red Lady!!” Way too loud!

“Please calm down, we don’t need you attracting the attention of everyone.” She shut her mouth with her hands. “I don’t know about these rumors I’m not a bloodthirsty maniac, I’m not searching for a fight, in fact I’m trying to avoid them.” I protested. 

Naoko stared at me.

“Are you serious? You’re trying to intimidate them, so they’ll leave you alone? But something’s weird, you don’t feel strong. Why do you restrain yourself?” she asked, genuinely confused.

“Restrain myself?”

“Wait, you don’t mean that you are actually that weak? You’re trying to intimidate everyone to submission while you are…like that? No wonder everyone thinks they can take you when you meet them!” she said in a tone that left no doubt I had missed something that passed for common sense around here.

“Wait a minute, what do you mean when you say that I feel weak?” I asked.

“I mean, like you can feel how strong someone is. Don’t look at me like that, I meant that it feels like they have a heavier presence…or something. You…uh…do it by concentrating on them I guess? I never really bothered to think about it before.”

Her explanations weren’t much but I tried it anyway, even if I thought it was probably a dumb prank. 

I was wrong. If I concentrated enough I could feel something rolling off of her. Me and Isamu had the same thing happening to us but far more subdued. So that was what she meant. It indeed felt like raw power or something of the sort. 

“Are you the norm?” I asked.

“Nah, not really. I’ve been here longer than most people, so I’m a bit stronger. Of course, there are some outliers who are really powerful, but they are pretty rare. You’re not the bottom of the barrel, some people you can’t even see their power, but honestly when it comes to the ones that aren’t afraid to show their face you’re rather on the low end. Honestly, it’s kinda impressive in its own way. People like you usually don’t last long before bleeding out with a shank in the guts.” she said mildly impressed.

So I’ve been punching above my supposed weight class since I arrived here. Nothing new. I had only one question left for her.

“So, how do I get stronger?” If I looked like a paper tiger to everyone around me, I just had to become a proper tiger.

“I dunno. It just happens over time I guess. It happens faster for some people though.” she shrugged.

Not really helpful, but at least I had the assurance that with the passage of time people would start treating me seriously.

“Alright, now that I answered all your questions it’s my turn.” she said while rubbing her hands. “I never had the opportunity to talk to someone from the living world before. I only know that we call it the living world because when people die there they get here. So, how did it happen?” She said with a glint in her eyes. 

“I’m not sure I want to talk about it.” I answered. Those memories were going to stay locked up for a while.

“Laaaaaaaame. And you kid?”

“I-I’m ot a hid! And you onwy to yea oder tan me anyay!” Isamu sputtered indignantly.

“Oh, sure you are. Isn’t he adorable?” She said while rubbing his head like one might a dog.

“Please wait on asking him until he gets better, alright? I can barely understand what he’s saying and it’s getting annoying. No offense of course Isamu.” 

“Is arite.”

“Fine alright, be like that then.” she huffed. “But I need to have something you know. So…” She adjusted her position. “How did you two meet?”

I sighed


	5. Day in the Spotlight

In the end we spent all the night trading questions, me fishing for information and her simply searching for gossip to entertain herself with. As she put it, it was hard to find someone willing to talk without them attempting rape in the next five minutes. Horrifying statements aside, I managed to get quite a lot from this exchange.

First of all, Zaraki was the very edge of Rukongai, nobody knew what laid beyond, there was just a wall like the one I found which had no gate. 

Secondly, without a doubt one of the most game changing revelations was the existence of this sixth sense. The fact that it could be used by everyone was very interesting and would warrant investigation later, but what was more important at the moment was the fact it was directly linked to someone’s physical strength and could be correlated to experience. I had been blindsided by people with super strength before and I could say with confidence that if they actually knew how to fight, I would have probably been killed, so being able to avoid that kind of situation was a godsend.

Even better: it worked through walls. It wasn’t perfect of course, my range was limited, the weaker someone was, the closer I had to be to detect them. But I had to admit it was fun. It brought me back to the time I could know everything happening with my bugs. I admit I missed the omniscience quite a bit, so having something similar even if far weaker felt awesome.

“Unngh!” It was the only sound the ruffian made when Isamu broke his skull with a two handed hit from behind with a plank of wood.

Isamu had made a lot of progress since I first met him. It was honestly hard not to when you were at such an abysmal level, but I had to admit he was catching up to me. It wasn’t that farfetched, I was not an absolute master of close combat by any stretch of the imagination, it was just everyone else that sucked. But I could freely say that I was proud of his progress. Isamu was very dedicated to learn what I was teaching him, and it showed. His body, which was somewhat pudgy at first, started to take a more decent shape. His abs would be something to behold in a few months. 

Then again, who knew how muscle growth worked in this place with such limited nutritional needs.

“Yosaku!! You’ll pay for this!” 

The poor man who had just lost his buddy didn’t have time to deliver vengeance upon my student as Naoko had just finished with her own opponent and came stabbing. 

Naoko had decided to stay around. She had been around for about two weeks now and there had been no incidents despite a few complaints about my training regimen. I still didn’t trust her fully, but even after voluntarily baiting her with seemingly perfect opportunities to betray us, she hadn’t followed through. I had dealt with worse teammates. Having a third member was also a great advantage. It was a force multiplier, it meant the assistance of someone knowledgeable about the locals, and it was a potent mean to make potential attackers hesitate further. 

The only issue was her reluctance to get into the thick of a fight, as per her own words you couldn’t brute force your way all throughout this district, you were eventually doomed to run into someone far stronger than you. She preferred sneaking around and avoiding threats altogether, something that I probably should have considered doing a while ago. But her tendency to fly rather than fight didn’t mean she was a pushover in the least. She was strong and could easily handle the rabble and fight somewhat evenly with the more superhuman ones.

In fact her way of going about living in Zaraki raised my suspicions about how to increase the power of this “aura”. The fact was that both Isamu’s and my own power were steadily growing, and I was confident that in two months or so I would reach what was Naoko’s level when we met her. So, unless the diminishing returns would be hitting hard, which was unlikely since I could sense her aura slowly grow too, at a slower rate but still noticeable. I also considered that power growth could change depending on the person, but it couldn’t explain why someone with a 16 years head start wasn’t magnitudes stronger than us. 

The only real difference I could find was in our behavior. While Naoko used to hide and avoid danger as much as possible, I had been willingly exposing myself to danger and attracting numerous fights every day. The answer I came up with was exercise. It was just a theory but perhaps this aura could be trained like a muscle. By fighting everyone I looked at wrong I was regularly depleting my aura and it was getting bigger each time. So to get strong quickly I needed to put myself into life threatening situations daily.

That was why despite Naoko’s warnings I had kept overtly exploring the district. The further my reputation increased, the more I would be attacked by upstarts that wanted to get famous quick. 

That was completely insane of course. Disregarding the fact that I would be risking my life on nothing more than a supposition, I would inevitably reach a point where my shoes would get too big for me to wear. Someone far too strong was bound to take notice and come take care of the young upstart. 

As of now, I had managed to bridge the gap with my assailants’ physical superiority with sheer skill, but against someone sufficiently strong they wouldn’t be enough. I was pretty weak compared to the others, but my current abilities were above what someone of my build should have been able to do. I could imagine what someone with the triple of Naoko’s aura could do. I wasn’t going to engage a fight with a powerful Brute in close combat thank you very much.

There was only one way to avoid fights I couldn’t win : use and abuse my sixth sense. There was no way to really identify someone using only their aura, meaning that with my unremarkable one people couldn’t recognize me using it. But the opposite wasn’t true. While my opponents couldn’t detect me from a distance, I just had to avoid large groups or very strong auras. 

Of course, due to my public appearances they only needed a friend to see me and bring word of my position. Which led to my current predicament.

A fight against a skilled brute and his posse of thugs.

Considering they outnumbered us by a few, we had been doing remarkably well. The idea in that kind of situation was to evade as much as you could and take any opportunity to thin enemy numbers. The real problem was the leader. He hit like a truck and was skilled as well as fast enough to evade or block what I threw at him. Luckily, his growing frustration was making him sloppy.

“Raaaargh!” He went for a punch. I wasn’t going to block the hit head on, broken arms weren’t something I wanted to deal with. I parried and his arm went through the wooden wall behind me to his elbow.

I took advantage of the distraction and slashed his throat. It left a shallow cut and a broken knife.  
He backhanded me through a wall.

I flew through another one and landed amidst a carpet of broken wood.

I got up, trying to ignore the soreness of my body and the sharp pain that came from broken ribs. It was going to be a pain to deal with. No chance I was going to leave my teammates alone to fight this guy.

I caught a glimpse of the brawl. Isamu was doing his best to attack, keeping his distances as much as possible, while Naoko, the only one strong enough to actually do some damage, was trying to hold up to someone both more powerful and more skilled than her.

I pushed through the desire to just lay down to rest and ended up in front of the person shaped hole left by my passage. I didn’t have much of a plan, I wouldn’t be able to hold up a sustained fight against a brute, especially not in my current state. Being a superhuman brute meant that you were incredibly good at facing foes head on, so there was only one way for me to even the odds.

I got out of the house by the real door, out of sight of the ongoing fight, and climbed. Earlier, my knife broke while barely penetrating the skin, but it still cut. I could kill him, but I would need far more power behind my strike. I watched the fight from my vantage point.

The man landed a clean blow. Spit and blood flew from Naoko’s mouth as she was launched to the side. Now that she was out of the fight he was advancing towards Isamu.

I drew some kind of butcher knife from the makeshift belt behind my robes and I jumped.

Surprise attack.

The edge of my knife slammed on the top of his head with the force of a falling 130 pounds woman. It sunk in. 

The man fell forward, already dead. 

“Holy shit. We killed him? We actually killed him!” Naoko blurted out still on the ground, disbelieving.

Isamu said nothing. 

That guy had been strong. Too strong to be some nobody.

“You know who that was Naoko?” I asked.

“That…that was Bõ I think. A small-time warlord around here. Sure, he wasn’t high on the totem pole, his gang was at most fifteen people and he was supposed to be kind of a dumbass, but still…” 

Warlords were apparently a thing in Zaraki. Turns out, when people came out with superhuman strength in a lawless area, they tended to attract people who searched for protection. Or they forced their “protection” on others. 

Still, “warlord” for the leader of a gang of at most fifteen people was a bit much.

Well that didn’t matter now, he was dead. But I should be careful in the future, there was a good chance the rest of his small gang would come to try and get revenge. 

I looked around us. There were a few spectators looking at us intently, seemingly unsure about what to do about the trio that downed one the big names of the neighborhood and 4 of his men.

This hadn’t been premeditated and I had no declaration to make. I wanted them to fear me, to respect me, nothing more. My answer didn’t need to be words

Without letting any hesitation or fear show, I looked at each one of them in the eye, one by one, daring them to just try.

They looked away.

Good.

“Isamu, Naoko.” I called. “I believe we did enough for today. We’re going back.” I was mostly unable to fight anymore anyway, that punch he landed on me really did a number on me, but I wasn’t going to say it in front of an audience.

Isamu looked at the four bodies. He wasn’t hesitating over killing anymore, but he still showed some conflicted feelings after the deed was done. At least he wasn’t enjoying it. 

Naoko on the other hand, as befitting of someone raised in this environment, didn’t see any particular problem in taking lives. She did what she needed to do and that was it.

“Phew!! I’m not gonna complain about that!” she exclaimed as she wiped the trickle of blood flowing from her mouth.

“We killed someone important. Won’t that cause any problem?” questioned Isamu.

He was right. This was going to paint a target on our backs. Now the important players knew that we were a threat.

Another one would come. That was inevitable.

“It will. But he didn’t leave us with much of a choice, did he?”

He went silent, a pensive look on his face.

We left.

********

On our way back we could see people were now looking at us more carefully. A stark contrast from my first day where they simply dismissed me. Now the Red Lady was a known threat. A fearless woman who proudly walked the streets with two hanger-ons and a robe covered in bloodstains. I had been considering whether to find new clothes, after a few weeks of constant wearing my robes were starting to feel itchy. Luckily, we found a river four days ago, it was surprisingly clear so we took the opportunity to clean ourselves and our clothes. A godsend, the smell was getting unbearable. Too bad clean water wasn’t enough to properly get rid of bloodstains.

As we walked something felt stranger and stranger. The fear in their eyes was being slowly replaced with mere worry as they spoke together in hushed tones. Some of them were even running off, presumably to spread the information.

That was bad. It looked like I would have to move in hiding sooner than expected.

I looked at Isamu and Naoko and made a gesture of the head towards the side of the road.

They understood and they followed me between the various shacks, out of sight in the small and tortuous alleys.

Now I just had to use my sixth sense to avoid everyone and ensure they lost track of me. 

Some tried to follow me of course but knowing where they were at all time it wasn’t hard to escape by hiding inside one of the shacks or something of the sort.

After a few dozens of minutes navigating the place, I sensed something. At the edge of my range, around 50 yards away, a large number of auras was approaching, each individual separating to comb every small alley. 

Bõ’s men? No, there were too many of them.

We needed to get out of their way fast. 

I abruptly changed directions while accelerating my pace. And then I felt another group coming.  
Time was running out. They knew we were there, and they wanted us. 

“Taylor, what’s going on?” asked Isamu, worried. 

“We got guests. There’s no time, we need to run. Now!” They were approaching quickly and I didn’t fancy our chances in a direct confrontation.

I did my best to escape them, navigating the mess of passages as best as I could, unfortunately my new ability only allowed to sense living beings, so I was uncertain about where I would eventually end up.

Right, left, forward, left, right, right. As I concentrated on our pursuants, I failed to notice the more dispersed auras that were coming in front of me. We had arrived in a bigger road, in full view.

“That’s her! Get them!” Those were people down the road, slightly out of my range. They ran towards us.

I considered escaping through the other side, but I could feel some coming from there too. We were surrounded. To pull something like that over such a large area, whoever was in charge had some serious manpower under his thumb. 

Perhaps we could make a run for it, try to break the encirclement through the weakest point. 

Fighting in the cramped space between the small wooden buildings would be a pain and very dangerous, the other option was to follow the road and confront the ten thugs running our way, trying to pass them before the others arrived. It was unlikely to work but we didn’t have much of a choice.

“We will go in this direction. Only fight if you have to, we just need to go past them. If we get separated, we will meet at the river, okay?” I received two panicked nods and we went off.

In a few seconds we met the pack of enemies. 

I did my best to pass in a gap between the thugs, but one of them managed to force me in a struggle. 

I swiped a knife, he slightly backed away, simply stalling.

More arms gripped my robes and threw me back. I rolled on the ground and assessed the situation.

We were screwed.

Not only none of us managed to pass the wall of bodies, but the reinforcements had arrived. Almost forty people were amassed around us with more on the way. We weren’t going out of this.

I took a look at a trembling Isamu, despite his terror in the face of overwhelming odds he had readied his weapon in a desperate show of courage. I followed his example and unsheathed my best knife, preparing myself for my last fight. Naoko just looked at us as if we were insane.

None of us moved, the tension rising. In a few moments we would be buried under the mass of bodies. But we would go down swinging.

My foot shifted to better launch myself forward. I shifted my center of gravity.

“WHOA WHOA WHOA!!! Calm down everyone!!!” A powerful voice came from a larger aura in the crowd, slowly making its way through it.

A short man came out. He did not look all that impressive, but his aura said the opposite, it was the same size as Bõ’s. 

“We don’t want to kill you! Our boss just wants a meeting.” he said tersely.

That was interesting. Perhaps we had a chance to get out of this alive. But still…

“Just a meeting? And what’s all this for then?” I gestured at the crowd around us. He sighed.

“He wanted to meet now, and we were not sure where you were going or if you were going to come without a fight. Let’s just say you have a reputation, although-” He looked me up and down “-I feel it was a bit overblown.” I frowned.

Although I wanted to punch him in the face, I knew I didn’t have much of a choice. Either I followed him to meet his boss who was certainly stronger than him, facing probable death, or I fought and faced certain death. 

I hated this.

“Fine.” I begrudgingly said. “We’ll follow you, but if you try anything, I’ll make sure we won’t die alone.”

He smiled.

“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”


	6. King of the Worthless

We were being escorted by the small army towards who knows where.

Whoever we were being led to was obviously some kind of big shot. If one of his lieutenants was as strong as this guy, it gave a small taste of what was to come. 

I looked at Isamu and Naoko. The first one didn’t know one bit how to react to his current situation while the second was sweating bullets. She probably knew what was up. Asking her was probably a good idea.

“Naoko, do you know who they’re bringing us to?” I asked her quietly.

“Well, considering one of the guys escorting us is fucking Emon, yeah I can guess what kind of monster wants to see us. His name is-“

“Silence.” sternly interrupted the now named Emon. “My boss insisted that he would introduce himself in person for dramatic effect.” He didn’t seem to hold much respect for his superior’s theatrics. 

It was visible Emon didn’t care much about his image, a mistake if you wanted to build up your reputation. Shows of force were only half actual strength, to make it work you needed to put at least as much effort in the spectacle side to leave an impression of power. Still, despite the man’s lack of wisdom in this matter, it at least told me his boss wanted something more than our death if the fact we were still alive in the middle of his horde of thugs wasn’t screaming it already.

The question of what he wanted of us was obvious, he probably was going to press-gang us. As for what I could do against it, I honestly had no idea. Violence wasn’t an option, I was still seriously injured, outnumbered and outgunned. No, I needed diplomacy, not something I was proficient in.

I wished Lisa was here, she would have known what to do.

On second thought perhaps not. She would have inadvertently annoyed our escort into killing us.

Speaking of annoyed, Emon looked frustrated about pretty much everything, be it us, his men or even his own boss. If I had to guess, he wasn’t a willing subordinate. Perhaps I could do something with that, but I doubted I could turn him against his boss in the time we reached our destination. The fact that he sneered at almost all my attempts at discussion didn’t help.  
After ten to fifteen minutes of walking I started to see a change in our surroundings. It still wasn’t great, but you could tell that effort was made by residents to maintain the buildings and themselves. It was shoddy but it was there. They were organized here.

Finally, we reached what could best be described as a plaza. It was a large expanse of evened out terrain surrounded by houses, in the middle there was a wooden stage elevated a dozen feet off the ground to let the public have a clear view. And a public there was. At least a hundred and fifty people not counting our escort, all armed.

There were two men on the scene. Hr was probably in his thirties, a rather lean body and somewhat tall, but it was honestly the only parts of his body type worth describing, it was…ordinary. No, what really caught my attention was his garb. It was in perfect condition, a contrast with the other men’s fraying and dirty clothes. His weapon too put him above the rest, it was a very well maintained katana with an elaborate guard, by far the best bladed weapon I had seen since my arrival.

He was the boss, and the man trapped in wooden restraints next to him was going to be executed.

“You are charged with the murder of my men and being a pain in my ass. Any last words?” The tone was powerful, making sure to be heard by the whole crowd without seeming to be shouting. This was a spectacle.

“You can go fu-AAAAAAAH!” Before I could even blink the sword had swung down and the condemned man’s tongue went flying. An impossible show of precision, it wasn’t like it had been hanging out of the man’s mouth, he must have needed to reach in there with his sword to cut it without not touching anything else. The crowd exploded in laughter.

“Insult to the executioner is punished by the severance of the offending appendage.” he declared nonchalantly. “Unfortunately, it also means I need to wrap this up. We don’t want blood loss to take from you the awareness of your final punishment.” He put his foot on the screaming man’s back and prepared his sword for the strike.

The head rolled out of the stage while the body was unceremoniously kicked off of it, joining a small pile of headless corpses.

“Alright, was it the last of them?” he asked as he casually wiped his sword with a cloth before sheathing it.

“Yes sir!”

“Good good…Now we can address our three guests.” He turned towards us. “Welcome to my humble abode! I am Dai Shikei, Zaraki’s grand executioner!” he exclaimed while making wide movements with his arms. “I’m the one who lords over North Rukongai’s trash or at the very least a good chunk of it.” People in the audience chuckled. “And you must be the Red Lady and her two hangers-on. A shitty title as far they go to be honest, but what can you do, people around here are not that imaginative. What’s your real name?”

The idea of withholding that information didn’t even cross my mind. It wasn’t that big of a thing to give up, nobody around knew what I did. But even more than that I didn’t want to get on his bad side. He was strong, his aura was far stronger than that of anyone else present. I didn’t stand a chance.

“I’m Taylor Hebert, and my friends here are Naoko and Isamu Kodama. I apologize if I overstep my boundaries but why exactly were we brought here?” I said as respectfully as I could.

He laughed.

“Hehehahaha!! You’re as stuck up as they said you were! Straight to the point too, I like that in a girl! Nevertheless, I brought you here because you proved worth watching out for.” 

That was both a good and bad thing. That meant I was being recognized by the big players, but that also meant they would keep an eye on me. If I proved too much trouble for this guy to let roam free he was going to take care of me, and as I was I did not believe I could take him one bit.

“I can sense it, you’re weak, and yet you were able to take on someone so much above you. It would be like a small cat killing a grown man. My men saw you fight, you make up for strength with skill and cold ruthlessness. So I can imagine what kind of killing machine you would become in a few years.”

“You’re saying I’m a potential threat to you?” It was better to state it outright and cut to the chase.

It was met by a dumbfounded silence, then a small laughter bubbled up from Dai’s lips that spread like a plague through the crowd to finally become an uproarious laughter hundreds of people strong.

“BWAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!! A-A threat?! Hehehehe you got some good jokes lady, and to say it with a straight face! Alright, I believe you need a quick course on exactly what you’re dealing with!”

The best description I could give to what he did next was that he flexed. Until now his aura had been repressed, kept in a completely passive state, and now he was showing its full extent. 

Mine was decent enough, at its best it extended around 10 meters and I could crack stones if I focused enough.

His extended beyond my sight. I was around 50 meters away from him and it was still thick enough to almost make the air too heavy to breathe. Most of the audience simply collapsed on their knees. Isamu did the same, crying in abject terror of such an overwhelming presence, and was going to pass out. Naoko retched. I did not blame them one bit. All my instincts were blaring alarms, it was as if liquid fear was coursing through my veins.

And yet I stood.

I was no stranger to fear, it had always remained present within me, from the simple cape fights to the Endbringer attacks and eventually Scion himself. Fighting with no fear at all was merely recklessness, and recklessness led to death. But I had lived through too much to let it turn into terror.

But it wasn’t just a mental attack. It was as if the air itself had become molasses, the weight of the atmosphere pressing far harder on my shoulders and every motion becoming a slog. My legs were straining to keep me upright, and with the mere function of breathing being impeded, I was starting to suffocate despite my best efforts.

Quickly, the first spasms came, warning signs for the slight increase of CO2 in the blood starting to settle in. They were easily suppressed.

And then came the second wave as the pH of my blood kept dropping, my body begging me to breath that thick liquid the air had become.

Normally the best way to deal with apnea was to stop thinking. Imagine a white wall and relax, your body can deal with much more than what it lets on, but I couldn’t, my mind was simply focused on him, watching out for the slightest movement of the existential threat in the vicinity.

After a few more seconds that felt like an eternity he brought his aura down to its previous level. My teammates took great gulps of air and shakily attempted to get up once more. Dai looked impressed.

“You actually withstood my spiritual pressure, and that with that measly power of yours. I gotta say, you got some serious grit girl. When I first heard of you, I admit I did’t think much of you. Just another small tadpole making barely noticeable ripples in the pond, why would I care? Bõ wasn’t much either to be honest, a small fish playing as if he was a big one. Very annoying, I was looking forward to his execution. But you took it away from me.” He sighed. “I wanted to punish you for it, but seeing you now, the tadpole who ate the fish, I’m actually impressed.”

He closed his eyes and marked a pause, seemingly thinking over his decision.

“For the crime of killing the victim of the designed executioner, I sentence you to pay the life you owe him with your own! Your life shall now belong to him until either leaves this world! Now kneel!” he declared, smiling.

That was bad. Joining an organized group would probably be the safest best around here, especially with such a powerhouse of a leader, but I didn’t know enough about them to actually be sure I wouldn’t get dragged into some fucked up stuff. 

“Come on Taylor.” Naoko urgently whispered to me. “You know he wasn’t asking, just say yes.”

She was right of course, it wasn’t like I had any choice in the matter, Dai already made his decision, I was going to join whether I liked it or not. And yet, I couldn’t make my legs buckle in the slightest. Some part of me violently recoiled at the idea of kneeling to him under duress. At that moment I found myself almost wishing he would have stuck with his previous punishment. Only the fact I wasn’t alone prevented me from straight up spitting in his face to get on with the execution.

“Hmm, I can see on your face that you don’t exactly agree with my decision. Unfortunately for you I am the law here. Bring the other ones up!”

The thugs around us roughly grabbed Naoko and Isamu. They struggled back of course, it was in vain. I tried to pry the grips of their assailants, but there were simply too many of them. Quickly the mass of bodies separated us as they were inexorably pulled to the scene, no, the scaffold.

Once up there they were brutally thrown to floor. I could tell by the way they struggled to pull themselves up the injuries of our fight against Bõ still weighed on them, not that it would have mattered anyway.

“If you refuse to comply with my judgment the weight of your sentence will have to be increased. Instead of just taking your life I will have to cut down those that belong to you.” He unsheathed his sword and put it above Isamu’s head. “You have 5 seconds to comply or I will consider you in defiance of the order of the judge and will act accordingly. Five!” 

The bastard. I doubted he was going for the emotional angle by taking hostages, not in this sociopath-filled district. To him they were just my tools, and he simply was confiscating my property.

“Four!”

I looked at Isamu. He didn’t look sad or scared. He was simply resigned to his fate. Naoko looked in terror at the incoming death of what I hoped had become a friend.

“Three!”

This sensation of powerlessness. This feeling of being utterly trapped. I hated it, ever since my trigger event this weakness came back over and over again to haunt me. This old trauma would once have terrified me, even maybe paralyzed me. But I always overcame it, the increase in power it had given me always gave me enough to escape. I wouldn’t escape today, but I could channel this feeling into another one, one that would ensure I would get out eventually. Rage.

“Two!”

I swore in my mind I would kill him. It may take months, years even to escape his clutch, but it would happen, and I would happily watch him lose his life for the one he was stealing from me.

I grit my teeth and my knee started to bend.

“WAIT A MINUTE!”

The powerful voice came for nowhere and cut through the tension like through butter. Even Dai looked surprised. Everyone looked in the direction the sound came from. On the roof of one of the buildings surrounding the plaza a man stood.

“Who the hell are you?!” shouted Dai, left more confused than actually angry by the interruption.

“WHAT?! I CAN’T HEAR YOU THIS FAR OFF!”

“I asked who the hell you were!!”

“WAIT A SECOND, I’M COMING CLOSER!” And with those words he suddenly disappeared and reappeared in a second on the scaffold. I didn’t see any movement between point A and B, and judging by the reaction of everyone else they didn’t either, only Dai looked completely unimpressed. Teleportation? Maybe. It may have also been simply ludicrous speed, past a certain point the two were indistinguishable from one another anyway.

Besides his little showcase of speed, the man looked powerful as well. It wasn’t nearly as strong as Dai’s absurdly vast aura, but it was still above pretty much anyone else here. He looked in his twenties with messy brown hair and a goofy grin. A sheathed sword was at his side.  
Dai raised an eyebrow in recognition. “You? You better have a good explanation for this interruption.”

“These are my pupils. Their lives already belong to me. If you want to take them, I am the one you need to talk to.” He stood confidently in front of this monster, not showing an ounce of fear despite only having a single terrible bluff to properly defend himself. At that moment I sincerely hoped that Isamu and Naoko would keep their mouth shut. We didn’t need a poorly placed word to send us back to the beginning.

“Since when do you have pupils Ozawa?” He gave a glance at the sword at his belt. “They don’t even have a Zanpakuto. Why would a vagrant Shinigami give any care to such things as pupils, what would one such as you even do with such things?”

“Of course they don’t have swords yet, you know how hard it is to find a Zanpakuto, let alone a salvageable one this far in Rukongai.” He smiled. “And as for why I want to train them, I believe this is only for me to deal with, don’t you think?” The lines were delivered with absolute confidence, the mark of a true bullshitter. Most people knew that with enough confidence you could enter unchallenged the majority of restricted areas uninvited. What tipped people off wasn’t the fact you were an unknown face, in doubt they would simply assume their memory failed them. No, what blew your cover was the air of self-doubt you projected, hesitation on which route to take, nervous tics in what should be an ordinary situation. That didn’t only apply to infiltration however, this was true for pretty much every type of lie possible. As long as you acted like you believed what you said, people would have no reason to doubt it.

I just hoped it would work this time.

Dai mulled it over for a few seconds. He turned around to Naoko.

“Girl, what is his full name?” Internally, I started panicking. This was the exact reason that bluff was terrible, any question on this guy as a person was doomed to make it crumble.

“K-Kosaku Ozawa.” She knew him? Was he famous? Questions for later, for now I was just relieved we dodged that particular bullet.

“Hmm…If it’s not sword fighting what exactly does he teach you?”

“Ju-just hand to hand combat and knife fighting for now, until we find a sword.”

“…Fine, maybe they are your pupils, but you do realize this does not change anything about their fate right? You have to compensate the damaged party, which means me, and there’s little material possessions in Zaraki that has any value, let alone more than their life. They will still belong to me.” Bastard. Ozawa didn’t look the least bit surprised though.

“That is where your assumptions are wrong, I have something of far more value than three mere lives. Knowledge.” This caught the attention of Dai.

“Knowledge you say. You Shinigami are certainly ripe with it, but to say one like you would hold some that would be of value to me is a bit daring.” he said, skeptical.

“That’s true, I doubt you would be interested in kido or zanjutsu. But I have a single piece of knowledge that would be able to compensate you.” His gaze moved to Dai’s katana. “Your Zampakuto is a fine sword indeed, but it’s not meant to only be a mere blade. You must have seen from fighting Shinigami what it can really do. I can teach you how to do the same.” Dai scratched his chin in thought.

“You intend to compensate me with power. A bold move.” He smiled. “I like it. Something like that is easily sufficient to repay your debt. Maybe with this I could finally be able to kill it…” A wondering look appeared on his face. An opponent he couldn’t kill huh? It was something to keep in mind.

He quickly composed himself. “Alright! You lot can get back down to the ground!” he announced.

Slowly, as if they were afraid their survival was only the fruit of their imagination, they began to rise to their feet and went down the scaffold. Soon they were back at my side.

The Shinigami appeared next to me, his face set in the most serious expression I had seen on him since he appeared. “Once he gives us permission to leave, we get out of his territory as fast as we can. I would not recommend overstaying our welcome.” He turned back to the scaffold, loosening his features. “Alright! I’ll come back tomorrow morning to start your training. How does that sound?”

“That sounds perfect. But don’t forget.” Dai took a more sinister tone. “If you don’t show up it will take a lot more than the lives of your pupil to pay your debt. And I will come collect personally.” He put his smile back on. “Well, that’s about all I had to say! You can get out of my hair now. You’re dismissed!”

The sea of thugs parted in front of us and Kosaku took the lead as we walked out of there.

“Oh! And one one last thing little lady!”

I turned around. He was sitting on the edge of the scaffold, his sword resting on his shoulder. Still smiling.

“Welcome to Zaraki.”

After a few dozen minutes of walking we finally stopped seeing red paint on the shacks.

We were out.

Now it was time to ask questions.

This guy came out of nowhere, was apparently important enough for Dai to pay attention, stood up to him and was able to make a good enough counter-offer to save our lives. And all of that for what? Saving the lives of three people he didn’t even know?

That didn’t make a lick of sense.

He would perhaps try to leverage the life debt we owed him. Although that didn’t make much sense either considering the kind of place we were in. Honor was a concept difficult to find around here.

“Alright. I’m going to be blunt. Why did you intervene?” No sense beating around the bush. Whether his answer was a lie or the truth, I needed something to base my opinions on.

He rubbed the back of his neck, looking slightly embarrassed.

“Heh. Straight to the point like he said.” So he’d been listening from the beginning. It made sense, nobody with half a brain just jumps headfirst into that kind of situation without an idea of what was happening. He probably pretended to arrive at the last second in order to appear more heroic. Honestly, I couldn’t really begrudge him that considering I probably would have done the same thing. “I don’t suppose you would go along with it if I said I just wanted to help someone in trouble?” Not for the bargaining chip he just gave up. “No?” He sighed. “Fine, I saved you because I could do with your help.”

The only question in my mind at that moment was why us. He put himself in a lot of risk to get the help of three mildly strong people. And it’s not like we had any real influence around either. There had to be people more useful than us. And yet that’s the people he chose to bargain over against a guy who could kill us by flexing 50 meters away. Isamu expressed that sentiment perfectly.

“O-Our help? I-I’m really grateful sir for what you did, but…aren’t there better people?”

“Maybe. But I believe Taylor here has what it takes.” He turned to me. “I want you to start a gang.”

What?

“Look at this whole district. It’s nothing more than chaos. No real unity, and those who try to be that lynchpin become targets for those that came here to escape any sort of law. To bring order you need to be strong. And, well, you can’t really call the top brass around here anything close to reasonable.”

“And yet you managed to reason with Dai. That’s the whole reason we’re alive isn’t it?”

He snorted. “That man only cares that he can kill someone and feel somewhat justified about it. Despite his fickle nature, that makes him somewhat predictable. There’s one thing that he feels more justified in killing than anything else, and yet he can’t. I just had to pull on his frustration, offer him a way to get stronger quickly and get a chance to scratch that never-ending itch. And if he manages to kill that Beast, then all the better. That’s one less problem we have to worry about.”

“Something even stronger than him…” Isamu mumbled. The very thought of such a concept seemed to terrify to him.

“Hey don’t worry about it alright?” Naoko said as she put a hand on his shoulder in a reassuring manner. “I’ve been here for a long time and I never met it, so what are the chances that we will now?”

“She’s right.” The Shinigami continued. “Although having that thing dead would be nice, it’s just a walking disaster. Nothing less, nothing more. While Dai has an army and a wide influence, the Beast is just a dangerous, overpowered, unkillable animal. He’s neither the root or a symptom of the problem. No the issue is that 80th districts are the border of Soul Society, the place where the worst of humanity is inexorably pushed .” He made a frown of disgust. “Why would they restrain themselves when the only ones who could call them out on it are the same? Except that they’re not everyone, simply the majority.”

“The recently dead.”

“Exactly. They’re not much of a population, randomly scattered and easily killed, but they exist. And there’s of course those that are not all that bad but are trapped here. There is a base of people that wants a stable place where they would feel even the slightest bit safer.” I knew where he was going with this. Impressing the fact that this place needed order and that there would be supporters for such a thing. He wanted me to be their leader.

“Let me get this straight, you want me to become a warlord?”

“Precisely. Of course, not like Dai or the other ones. They don’t want to protect anyone or actually rule, they want to be able to do anything they want with impunity. I want you to care.”

I wouldn’t lie and say I didn’t think about it before. He wasn’t lying when he said that this place could do with a benevolent ruler, and I had experience. The question was: did I actually care enough about this place? Until now I had been bidding my time, waiting to be strong enough to escape. But why escape this place if I could change it into somewhere worth living in? Or being dead in I supposed.

“I’ll do it.”

“But you’re probably wondering what I-…what did you say?”

“I accept. I’ll be the warlord you need.”

“Well, uh, damn…I expected this to be a bit more difficult. I’ve been rehearsing this speech in my head for the past twenty minutes to convince you, and we’re barely at the half of it. You got some balls for a girl…or I guess a very feminine boy?” I knew my curves were still as a flat as they could be, but this was plain cruel.

“Definitely a girl.” I said, injecting as much venom in my voice as I could.

“Right. Still, that kind of grit is exactly what a leader need. I knew when I watched you stand up in front of Dai’s spiritual pressure, a man that could stand up to a Captain, that you were what I needed.”

“Alright, alright enough of the flatteries.” Naoko chimed in before grabbing my arm. “Can you leave us for a moment?”

She turned around and pulled me out of earshot. I went along with it, her uncharacteristically serious frown made it easy to guess what she said next. “You’re not actually considering that do you? That’s insane! Even more insane than your usual kind of crazy. I know that we should be grateful that he bailed out our asses from there, but that whole mess should be an incentive lay low and be more careful about who we piss off, not paint a target on our backs and shout a big ‘fuck you’ to everyone important in a 100 miles radius!”

She was right of course. This was going to attract the ire of any other warlord in the vicinity, and this time there wouldn’t be someone coming to our rescue at the last second. But what was the alternative?

“Remind me. How long have you been here Naoko?”

“Huh? 13 years. Why?”

“In your 13 years around, have you witnessed things get better around here? Have this district been safe for a single moment?”

“I..Uh…” Her eyes fell. “No.” As I suspected.

“Then listen.” I put my hands on her shoulders. “This place isn’t going to get better by itself. A wise man once said : ‘Be the change you want to see in the world’. If no one wants to do it, then it falls to us to take on the job.” She prepared herself to respond, but I quickly interrupted her. I wasn’t done. “I know this is going to be incredibly dangerous, and that our chances of success are at best feeble. But what is the alternative? Living a long life hiding in shadows, terrified of the monsters around us? Or do you want to take the risk to live a happier life, as dangerous as it may be? I already died once Naoko, and I am ready to die again. What about you? Do you want to survive, or to live?”

Her eyes were wide. “I-I don’t…know. Alright? I don’t know. This is….a lot.” Her breathing became ragged, her voice laced with panic. “Maybe you…no. This is insane, we can’t. But if…no. Just…Just give me some time alright?!” She pushed me away, obviously trying to get some space in an attempt to manage the anxiety that suddenly gripped her. I didn’t resist. This reaction caught me by surprise. I was used to her cool demeanor, sprinkled with snide remarks. I did not expect her to keep on this trend with such a serious decision, she knew to take things seriously when they needed to be. But this? A damn near panic attack was not on my list.

I realized in that moment that despite all the time I spent with them, all the hours of training, all the discussions we had about the world around us, I didn’t know much about her, or Isamu for that matter. I felt relaxed when the three of us were together, and I enjoyed watching the both of them argue and mess with each other, but that was pretty much it. I didn’t take part in the whole dynamic. I was distant, like an observer. Why was I doing this? Why did everything I took part in had to be business? I couldn’t do with them what I did with the Chicago Wards. There was no impending doomsday, I was not on probation for the murder of two people, and I did not have the baggage of having been Skitter, the woman who took over a city. To them I was just Taylor. That is who I must be. Not Weaver, not Skitter, Taylor.

My musings were interrupted by Isamu who ran to help Naoko, doing his best to calm her down. She needed space from me for now so going to join him in his efforts would probably not help. The only thing I could do to alleviate her confusion was to make things clear, it wouldn’t make it go away, but it would make things easier.

“I made my decision.” I spoke loud enough so that the Shinigami could hear me. “I will become a warlord and do my best to build a safe place in this district.” Isamu and Naoko looked at me, their expression hard to read. “Whether you want to join me or not I won’t hold it against you. This is a reckless and probably idiotic idea, but I believe it is the only thing worth doing right now.” I turned back to the Shinigami. “If I’m going to do this I will need some help. You offered Dai a way to gain power quickly, I will need that if I’m to stand the slightest chance against the other powerhouses.”

“Impossible.” He shook his head. “You literally do not have the equipment needed to do that.” He marked a pause, seemingly thinking over something. “But I can teach you the next best thing. How do you feel about magic?”


	7. Interlude: Failure

He was a failure.

The first son of a prestigious family of potters, he was expected to take up the business once his father passed away. Until then he lived as his apprentice.

Endlessly he practiced, from dusk to dawn under the watchful gaze of his father, hoping to one day be worthy of his heritage.

He wasn’t.

No matter what he did, how long he trained, how much improvement he made since the previous day, it wasn’t enough. With time, even the worst waste of skin could have skill, but never talent.

Despite all of the effort that went into his pieces, there still lacked a spark.

Eventually his brothers caught up with him, their pieces perhaps less impressive in skill, but far more brilliant than his own. He knew that was the case. His father would soon decide his brothers were more worthy. It was only right.

And yet his father still stood with him, mentoring him above all others.

He appreciated it, but he knew that it was out of pity, he was wasting the precious time of his father. He was a good man, truly, he admired him, but the son knew that he wasn’t deserving of this attention, it was better spent on his siblings, he was dragging them down.

And with this belief, mere disappointment became guilt.

This guilt started showing itself in his work. He started to regress. His father didn’t see the cause, only the results. Even he, in his deep love and patience, started to show frustration as his efforts to see his son grow stopped bearing fruit.

The son knew that his family hated him, they had to. Despite all the efforts they delivered for him, he couldn’t manage to pay them back. Frustration, disgust, disappointment that was all he deserved.

Eventually his father decided to make his brother the heir of the workshop. It was only right. He knew he hadn’t been deserving of it. So why did it hurt so much? Some leftover piece of misplaced pride? It didn’t matter, it too became a reason to feel guilt.

He couldn’t trust himself anymore. His own judgment was as worthless as he was, the only thing he could trust was what others were thinking of him. And he knew that they had to despise him. He could hear it in their voice when the shame was weak enough to bear that he could come down from his room: sadness. He was making them suffer. They had to hate him, so he hated himself. Or was it the other way around?

It did not matter.

Guilt turned to hate.

Still he continued living. He continued practicing more out of habit than any real drive. He didn’t have any passion left.

What was the point of all of this? The world was so gray and dull, he felt no attachment to it. Perhaps he could spare his family the shame of his existence, but he still loved them, he knew that this would hurt them. He could not bear the thought of inflicting upon them more misery than he already had.

Or were these excuses? Was he really just a coward? Did he really feel all of this misery, or were those merely ploys to get more attention? He did not even know.

He didn’t know what he felt.

He didn’t know who he was.

He didn’t know what he was doing.

He didn’t know what he knew.

He was a failure.

That was the only answer he could find.

Until another one found his room.

He woke up to flames licking his skin.

The rumbling sound of fire consuming wood was everywhere. How did he not wake up earlier to this horrific racket? In other circumstances he would have chastised himself for such a mistake and started panicking, unsure of what he should do. But not this time.

This time he didn’t think.

Fear flooded his veins. The imminent danger sharpening his senses, bu the fire and smoke clouded them, carbon monoxide making him dizzy and nauseous.

He didn’t know where was the window, he didn’t know where was the door.

He didn’t know what to do.

But he did he did it anyway.

He didn’t know, but his body did. Muscle memory took charge and he passed through the burnt opening.

He was at the top of the stairs when he heard it.

A cough.

It had come from his sister’s room. She was still there.

He backtracked into the corridor and went into her room. The ten year old girl was sprawled on the floor, arms weakly trying to push her up.

Without hesitation he grabbed her and went to the stairs.

The descent was difficult. The noxious fumes, the searing flames eating at his bare feet, the additional weight he carried. There were 15 steps, and each one felt like a terrible ordeal.

When he reached the end, he buckled but endured.

He continued walking.

He hoped the rest of his family had made it out.

The entrance came into view. There it was, safety, security. Life.

There was only 10 meters. It wouldn’t have been much had he woken up earlier, but the building had been burning for far too long now and its flimsy wood was giving in, pieces of the upper floor falling down at random intervals.

It didn’t matter.

The idea to give up didn’t even start to form in his mind. In fact it was entirely empty. There was just one goal, with nothing else that possibly make him question it: get her out.

He walked forward, as everything came crashing down around him. One searing yet painless step at a time. Until he heard a deafening crack, this time directly above him.

He didn’t have time to move out of the way as he was. So, in a hundredth of a second, he made up his mind.

The human body almost never operates at full strength. There is a plethora of measures designed to prevent it from harming itself. Fear, hesitation, caution, discomfort. They are used by the brain to make you stop in your tracks and think of a course of action that wouldn’t leave you injured and defenseless.

But there are times where those safeties are bypassed, where the situation is far too urgent and desperate to worry about what would happen ten seconds from now. That is how a mother is able to lift absurd weights to free her trapped child. That is how he threw his sister several meters, through the door and into safety.

Torn muscles, a broken bone, fractured cartilage, a dislocated shoulder. The sum total of these self-inflicted injuries would be enough to leave him for months without the use of his arms, and even then, they would never be as efficient as before. 

He would never have to know.

The burning furniture landed on him.

He burned as the adrenaline wore off. It would have been an excruciating way to die, but his mind and body were far too exhausted to even register the pain. In the end he faded away peacefully in the flames of his home.

He died.

He knew it as he watched the ruins of the house. People had been digging through the rubble and found his corpse.

It had been terrifying, to see himself in such a horrifying state. The worst was the face. Facial features stripped away to reveal the charred muscles underneath. The skin of his lips burnt away, leaving bare the teeth, seemingly arranged in a disturbing rictus. And then there were the eyes. They said eyes were the mirrors of the soul, but the only things left were two dark holes. The ensemble felt to him as nothing more than a mockery of the human body. And that was what was left of him. He couldn’t bear to look at it.

Thankfully he had been the only victim of this fire. He and his sister were the only ones inside as the rest of the family had went to dine at an old friend’s home. They had returned to a ruin and a weakly breathing daughter. She recovered in time, but her memories of the events were hazy. Although she may not have remembered his action, they could still deduce who had saved her.

His funerals took place soon after. He didn’t come, he didn’t have the courage for it. So he stayed there, at the place of his death.

Time passed. He had quite literally nothing to do, so he turned to the only thing he had: his thoughts.

The first few days he was happy despite his circumstances. He saved his sister like some kind of hero, so was it not all worth it? His life for her life. It was a good trade. This failure did something of worth after all. He would have been content to pass to his next life then.

But it didn’t come. For some reason he was stuck here, and he saw no way out. At first he thought the chain protruding from his chest was some kind of mystic thing that attached him to this world, but when mouths appeared on its end and started to eat it away, inflicting on him excruciating pain, it didn’t seem to be correct.

So what was he missing? Why was he still a ghost? Did he have lingering regrets strong enough to keep him here. Some other obsession? Perhaps he was missing some other thing, he couldn’t be sure, he never had been all that interested in religion despite his pious upbringing.

A week passed. He was still there. His thoughts had become darker with time. He started to go back to his old habits, falling once more into a downwards spiral of negative thoughts. He deserved it. They were better off without him anyway. He wasn’t even worthy enough to pass on properly.

The chain ate itself faster.

After two weeks, it was only a few feet long. The frequency of the spurts of pain increased, which did not improve his state of mind. Two weeks without anyone able to see or even touch him.

He just felt so lonely.

And someone came.

He didn’t notice him at first. So many people came and went, why should he pay attention to them after they proved unable to interact with him?

“Damn. You ok buddy?”

He looked up from his curled up position. A man in black robes and a sword at their hip was looking directly at him. Did-did someone just talk to him?

“Don’t worry, kid. It’s over now.” The man tapped him on the head with the hilt of his sword.

Everything went white and he passed on.

But even in death there is seldom peace to be found.

He was sent to a place far worse. He didn’t know where he was, he should have reincarnated and yet here he was, still aware of his past life. Perhaps his parents had been wrong. Perhaps there was no reincarnation cycle and the truth lied elsewhere. After a single day there, there was only a single possibility left in his mind: he was in the realm of the Ashura. The legends about them having three faces and six arms had to be exaggerations, but how else could you explain the horrors those human-like figures committed. Murder, rape, torture. He knew these were all actions humans could commit, but how could they occur so often in broad daylight? How could these atrocities be so readily accepted that the victims were simply mocked by onlookers instead of saved?

The answer was obvious. They weren’t human. He couldn’t bear to accept anything else.

So he hid. For days he stayed in the dark corner of a derelict shack, hoping nobody would come.

It was a fool’s hope. Eventually somebody would seek shelter too. And she did. When she entered she had been covered in blood, clearly not her own. In a fit of courage he struck, but the woman easily brought him down, her eyes filled with the intent to kill. And yet she spared his life.

Maybe she was someone he could trust. He knew it was naive of him, that he was just desperately reaching, but maybe she was a human like him trapped in a hellish realm where she didn’t belong.

He was wrong.

The next day a few people attacked them. She killed them all. Without mercy. There was no other choice of course, she was well within her rights to defend herself, but the look in her eyes told another story. It was rage. Not the fire lashing out at everything in range that was so common around here, but a cold calculated one, without flame yet able to reduce to cinders any who dared to test its patience without remorse. One of the men had his face seared off, the bloody results reminding him of his own corpse, screaming at the horrifying pain. He puked, she blinked.

She was like them. She belonged here.

But was that such a bad thing? For all her anger, it was not directed at him. She trained him, cared for him, even though he offered next to nothing. He was dead weight and yet she bothered with him.

He was scared of her, but he was full of gratitude. So he did his best to repay her or make sure that he would be able to soon. His dedication to his training earned him her praise, and he was quickly improving. He had a long way to go but in a few weeks he would be able to stand for himself. It was not fast enough. He yearned for that day he could repay his debt. Until then he would have to be content with watching out for intruders at night.

It was one of those nights that he heard a girl scream. Those were depressingly far from rare around here, but this time it was so close. It was just behind the corner. He debated in his mind whether he should go or not. Was it worth the risk? He then remembered his sister, down on the floor, barely breathing.

He stopped thinking.

The fight had been a mess. In the end he received far more hits than he managed to give, but the girl had been given the opening she needed to fight as well.

His benefactor- no, his master had been surprisingly welcoming. He saw a hint of wariness, but nothing more. She cared. The little dressing down he had received could only come from genuine worry. He would do better next time.

As for the newcomer he saved, she was strange. She was from here, and yet he saw in her none of the anger that permeated this place. Instead he saw fear. She almost did all the work when he went to save her, and yet she allegedly chose to scurry around hidden from the view of potential aggressors. Not that she had been wrong in the end, but still. If only she wasn’t so keen to tease him he would perhaps consider her a friend. Or perhaps he already did. He really didn’t know what to think.

Either way now that they were three he felt far more confident when they went out. Fights went more easily in their favor, and in general they happened far less often. There was strength in numbers as his master said.

It did not last long.

They ended up attracting the wrong kind of attention, he was pretty sure he pissed himself, he almost died, one thing led to another and now…

“Alright. That’s it for this side of the house. Kosaku, Li, I need you to get some more rope. The rest of us will prepare the wood for the next one.” Now he was bossing people around and building houses.

That had not been how he thought the afterlife would play out, but he wasn’t going to complain. Of course his responsibilities did not just extend to building lodgings. He worked on whatever project his master saw as important. He appreciated the show of trust, but he had to admit he wasn’t all that comfortable in such a position of command. Still, he got used to it.

It helped that the people under him were desperate. He had worried in the beginning that they wouldn’t be able to find enough people willing to join them before someone powerful got fed up and crushed them. It already happened once after all. But in the end Naoko had proven incredibly useful. She knew where to find the hidden, those that did not dare to step into the light where the predators thrived, she had been one of them. With the reputation they had started to build and his master’s promises of protection, they were easily swayed.

After a week they had been ten, fifteen after a month, and forty after two months. Getting them onboard had been easy, but keeping them in harder. They had to prove they weren’t like the other warlords, with big promises and nothing but suffering in the end. So they built. They needed people to be happy, and to do that they needed better living standards. No more sleeping fearfully in ruined structures where rain would simply pass through the roof.

“Isamu!” He turned around. Naoko was running towards him at full speed. He braced for the impact. Sure enough the tackle she performed easily took him off the ground. Since their master had taught her how to subdue opponents without hurting them she had been relentlessly practicing on him at each chance she had. But why? Sure, he could take it, he had grown used to it, but it was still a bit annoying. He was pretty sure that last point was one of the main reasons she was doing it.

She had grabbed his thighs, preventing him from simply kicking her away. So, before they landed, he thrust his hand into the ground and contorted himself, flipping around himself with his arm as the axis. It was a superhuman feat, only rendered possible by the otherworldly strength they slowly gained and Naoko’s momentum.

She was slammed into the ground.

Naoko quickly got up, ready to continue her assault. Isamu did too, hoping for the opposite.

“Stop that! I got stuff to do.”he quickly said. Which was true, he had a few more construction sites to check out. He would leave out the fact that he probably would only be absolutely necessary in an hour at the earliest.

“Fine.” she huffed. “I was pretty sure I would have gotten you this time around. How do you manage these stunts anyway? I’m pretty sure what you just did was completely impossible.”

“If I did it, it wasn’t impossible.” Obviously. Her continued attempts simply made him really good at countering them.

“Riiiiiiight.” She narrowed her eyes. “Did Taylor teach you some kind of super secret technique? Because if that’s the case I want in.” The use of the first name and the lack of honorifics had been grating at first. He had done it too before, but he had the excuse of simply not knowing Hebert was her actual last name. But like the rest he got used to it. He simply accepted that she had absolutely no notion of decorum and that there was nothing to do about it. Also his master didn’t seem to mind, so he did his best to bear with it.

“There’s no such thing and you know it.” he said truthfully. He didn’t want to admit it, but he had been disappointed when he discovered the fantasies about martial arts that he heard from people his age weren’t actually true. Still, he hoped that one day he would be skilled enough to beat anyone with a single punch.

“I know, I know. Still, that would be pretty neat wouldn’t it? I never saw an actual martial artist before, and Taylor keeps protesting that what she does is just ‘practical fighting’. I’d love to see what all the fuss is about this stuff.” According to his master it was actually pretty underwhelming, but she had to be wrong. Martial arts are cool.

“Right, right. I’d love to continue chatting but as I said I’m quite busy.” Her raised eyebrow indicated that perhaps next time he’d have to find another excuse.

“We need to talk, one on one. It’s important.” This time it was spoken with a serious tone. He’d be an idiot to ignore it. He sighed.

He turned to his small construction crew. “Guys, I’ll be gone for a while, I trust you to not slack off.” After a subdued chorus of ‘Yes Boss’ he turned back to Naoko. “Follow me.”

They walked to a small path between two buildings that had yet to be renovated. The territory they had claimed was a small one, but he trusted that everyone was busy enough that no one would bother coming here.

“So? What’s so urgent?”

“I-Nothing really. But I needed to talk to you in private.” She grabbed him by the shoulder as he moved to leave. “We barely talk anymore. We both know they won’t miss you for a while there. Please.” Something in her eyes told him it was in his best interest to indulge her.

“Fine.” he sighed.“What’s the problem?”

“Does there need to be a problem for us to talk?” she answered as he rolled his eyes. “For the last month both of you barely made the time to talk anymore. Always making excuses, always ‘too busy’. If I didn’t trick you it would have happened again there. What’s the matter? Why are you avoiding me?”

He opened his mouth to protest, but he closed it back down quickly. It was true wasn’t it? He had the time, so why would he rather spend it by staying around places he wasn’t actually needed? He knew the answer.

“I’m not avoiding you. I just feel like there is always more important. Instead of wasting time here I should spend it where people might need me.” As soon as he finished his sentence he regretted it.

“Wasting time? You think you’re wasting time by talking to me?! Who the hell do you think you are?” Her fists clenched hard enough for them to whiten. He could almost feel the anger building up inside her.

“I’m sorry, I apologize, that came out wrong.” he blurted out. “I-It’s just that I think of it as time for myself and I-uh-I-”

She looked at him as if he grew a third head, the anger still there, but with a strongly rising feeling of confusion. She let out an exasperated sigh and put her face in her palms.

“You really are a fucking idiot. How do you manage to be so selfish and selfless at the same time?”

“I-I don’t know. I guess…I just want to be useful.” He looked down.

She groaned. “I think Taylor rubbed of a bit too much on you. You shouldn’t try to emulate her, the girl really doesn’t know how to take a break.” That wasn’t something he would deny.

“Yeah. I wish master would open herself up a bit more.”

“Heh. Hearing you call her ‘master’ is never gonna be not weird.” she snorted. “You could call her ‘boss’ or something, but I don’t mind. It’s part of your charm.” He blushed. “ But you’re right. I’m used to people pretending to be friendly, not friendly people acting like they’re not.”

A pause installed itself.

“It’s been a while since then, but do you remember when it was just the three of us?” he asked.

She rolled her eyes. “It’s been two months, wouldn’t exactly call it a while. But yeah, of course I remember. What of it?”

“When we would come back home after a day of walking and fighting, when it was just us and nobody else, she completely let down her guard.” he said. “I could tell you know? She always put up this front of an imperturbable fighter, but when were alone she looked so...tired.” 

She narrowed her eyes. “Yeah, you’re right. I’ve seen a lot of stuff around here, but I’ve never seen someone look so exhausted before. And my guess is that wasn’t because of the fights, at least not as much.” she noted sadly.

“At least then she had downtime. She does try to get us together and just talk, but there’s always that feeling that she’s forcing herself, that she always has something else more important to do she can’t bear to delay.” he bemoaned.

Both paused, caught in their own thoughts. Naoko broke the silence.

“You really do care about her a lot don’t you?” This was a fact, but Isamu understood what the implied question was.

“Of course.” he answered. “I owe her a lot, and I don’t think I could ever repay it in full.” He looked at her in the eyes. “And you? It’s obvious you’re not at ease with this whole warlord plan, even after all this time. You could have high-tailed it at anytime, not one of us would have stopped you.”

“Yeah.” she said quietly. “There’s hardly a day that goes without me thinking at least once of bailing out. But…” She paused as she blushes. “I-I think I’m more scared of… not having you both.”

Isamu refrained from speaking, afraid that if he were to even move slightly wrong she would hide that ‘weakness’ with all her might once more.

“Naoko isn’t my given name you know…” she admitted. “But I wasn’t all that creative either. My parents used Anoko to address me. It took me a while to understand that no one would be retarded enough to address their daughter directly with ‘that girl’. Judging by the look on your face I guess you know I mean.” Isamu’s face was pale. Inside of him disgust, anger, and compassion rolled inside of him. His father had brought him to the brothel once or twice to get him out of his funk. He knew how the owners addressed their employees. To think someone would think of their own child as nothing but a…

“Bah. Don’t worry about it.” she said, interrupting his thoughts. “They were pretty horrible, yeah, you have to be to manage to squick out the bosses of the 79th district, but they’re long dead anyway.” She looked up, smiling in fond remembrance. “Ah yeah. That was a good time.” She shook her head. “But that’s beside the point. What I meant was that, you were both...uh… I didn’t- I- Fuck. I can’t chicken out now.” Isamu observed mesmerized as an internal struggle the likes of which he never even heard of in myth was going through her. If she were to suddenly explode in a burst of flames he wouldn’t be surprised one bit. 

“You-you-urh-You were the first-uh-to-” She paused, took a long breath and put her head in her hands, seemingly giving up. “I-I don’t care if I die, everything around sucks and it’s fucking horrible. I wouldn’t miss anything. But now it-it terrifies me. I don’t care if this whole warlord thing kills me, but if you both die I……

...I just don’t want to be alone again…”

Silence came back, none of them knowing what to say. After a few dozen seconds Isamu was the one to break it. He couldn’t stay silent after all that.

“I promise.” he said. “I won’t leave you alone. I swear.”

She answered with a bitter smile. “Please. That’s not the kind of promise you can keep.”

He looked down thinking. He then looked at her in the eyes. “True. But I can swear I’ll do my best to stay with you. I will never leave you alone. “

He watched her face nervously, it was as neutral as it could be. For about 5 seconds that is. It started as a light chuckle, slowly growing, after a while turning into uncontrollable laughter. It only abated once it became painful. “HAHAHAHAHAHA-urgh-hahe Holly-heh-shit what the fuck?! How do you manage to be so sappy? Hehe.” 

He frowned, was she insulting him? He truly meant everything he said. 

“Oh come on don’t be like that. I mean, how can you manage to keep a straight face while spouting out lines like that? I might as well have been coughing up blood during my own speech. And I practiced it!”

He really didn’t know what to respond to that. “I-uh…”

“Bah, don’t worry about it. I like that about you. Here.” She handed him a necklace. It was a crude thing. Some of the strings of the thread were lose and ended up jutting out. On it hanged what looked like a miniature boar. He only knew it was supposed to be one because of the distinctive tusks. And because he knew she found them adorable. 

“Thank you.” he said, still gobsmacked.

“I wanted to give it to you regardless, but now we can say it’s some kind of lucky charm for you, to help you keep yourself alive. And shut your mouth, I’m pretty sure I could fit my whole hand in there.” she said playfully

He obeyed promptly. He looked back at the necklace. Sure, it was shoddy craftsmanship, but he could tell the time and effort that went into it. It was beautiful, especially coming from her. “Thanks.” he said again while tying the necklace around his neck. “I’ll treasure it.”

“You better.” She paused, visibly thinking about something. “You know, now that I think about I believe I heard about stuff like that before. Isn’t that what they’d call courtship?” 

If this was courtship, this was a pretty simple interpretation of it. But then again, what did he know about it? He had never been popular with the ladies and the little he knew about romance came from stories about the nobility. “Uh, maybe?” he shrugged.

“Sweet! Does that mean you wanna fuck later?”

Isamu’s brain short-circuited. It hadn’t been the first time she made the offer, she wasn’t the kind of girl to be embarrassed by things like that, but he hadn’t been comfortable enough with her at the time to do anything but sputter indignantly. Now though? Wouldn’t it be...appropriate?

“S-Sure.” That single word took more out of him than any of the work he had been doing today.

Naoko laughed. “Hahaha Look at yourself. I wonder if I can get you even more red.”

“Please don’t.” 

“Don’t worry I’m just pulling your leg.” she said “Not about the fuck though, I’ll hold you to that.” Fantastic. “Come on let’s get Tay.” she stated as she turned on her heels and started walking. He followed of course.

The house they were heading towards had been the starting point of the village, it hadn’t been the one they holed up in during their beginnings in Zaraki, this one had been a bit too close to Dai, but it grew on them nonetheless. More importantly all of the other housings had been built around it, and with no one wanting to be the one living the furthest from their protectors, they ended up forming a slowly growing circle with what his master called their headquarters at the center.

As they were slowly walking, he could see the lodgings getting less and less well made. This was not due to age as some of them were not even two months old, but it was rather a testament to how far they came in such a short time. In the beginning they barely knew what to do. His master had some experience in renovation and construction of housings, but it was summary and only concerned working with ready materials. Here they had to almost start from scratch, some of the houses being far too derelict for their wood to be reused. At least the forest wasn’t that far.

Still, with experience he was starting to see those early works as embarrassing. He already asked to upgrade them to their current standards, but his master had refused, telling him that building more was for now far more important. He fully agreed on this, but he couldn’t prevent himself from cringing each time he saw a mistake in a building that could have been easily avoided.

After a few minutes they finally arrived at their destination. This house was far larger than the others and included a second floor. His master was of the opinion that a symbol of their status as leaders was necessary to separate themselves from subordinates and incite respect. He felt some shame at that, unsure that he deserved better, but he relented.

Being a leader sure was difficult, and he wasn’t even at the top. His master had to bear that responsibility. 

Naoko opened the door and he followed suit. The place was a bit austere and lacked in the way of decoration, but it was starting to grow on him. He would try to make it feel a bit more like home when he’d get more free time. 

His master was in the living room, hunched over the table where a makeshift map of the town and its surroundings had been placed. She was without a doubt planning how best to handle their closest neighbors. As expected, these hadn’t been very cordial and were starting to get more and more aggressive with time. 

But his master had it handled. There was nothing to truly worry about.

She turned her head towards us, raising an eyebrow quizzically and straightened up. 

“Isamu, Naoko.” she said in a curious tone. “What are you doing here?” She picked up the waterskin at her hip and brought it to her lips.

“Hey Tay.” Naoko answered in a peppy tone. “Isamu and I are gonna fuck. You wanna join?”

He hoped the sunny weather would be enough to dry his now drenched top.


	8. Haven

I was aimlessly walking around the camp, checking the progress of things. It was an important task that had to be done several times a day, projects were still rather short term and orders had to be issued. We couldn’t have able hands doing nothing after all.

I looked up at the sunny sky.

Yep, I really had nothing better to do…

…

Who was I kidding? I ran away.

I was happy for them, really. They loved each other and that was great, any relationship that was better than what I had with Brian was good in my book. Not that it was a high bar to pass. I truly missed Brian, but even I could tell that a relationship built almost exclusively on a foundation of trauma and stress relief was not healthy.

I just wished soundproofing was a thing around here.

I pushed my mind back to more comfortable matters. Namely management.

This wasn’t my first time being a warlord and building a community, but it had been a while ago. Getting back into lost habits had been harder than I expected. Especially since I had no swarm to help me survey everything that was happening this time around

I was trying to compensate by using spiritual sensing at all times, but it was still pretty iffy, it felt like trying to learn how to sense through my bugs all over again, except this time I started out with a way smaller range. It was getting bigger, but it was still a far cry from the three blocks I had when I was alive.

Thankfully I didn’t have to deal with accounts management this time. That particular skill was always more Lisa’s thing than mine, but if I could switch my current workload with only accounting I would gladly do so. This was….a lot.

First on my list was making sure we didn’t implode, and that meant keeping my people content. That particular path went through the construction and maintenance of infrastructure and installation of enforced rules. The laws part I had handled, and while it wasn’t perfect, my people at the very least didn’t think I was trying to make suckers of them.

For the infrastructure, our ramparts were a given to provide safety considering the state of the outside world, and houses were still a work in progress. There were also obvious quality of life requirements like toilets and places to wash yourself, although the latter were left to each one’s discretion. I already had my hands full thank you very much, I was not going to micromanage to this degree.

I also had to consider how much I was willing to make my people work. After all, we needed hands if we wanted to keep expanding our settlement, but if I overworked them we would be running into efficiency problems. I didn’t want to end up dealing with strikes either. 

As for the children…I didn’t like it one bit, but anyone aged twelve and above had to help out. I adapted their tasks to their age of course, but we couldn’t let idle hands go like that. Especially idle hands that grew up to be independent and wouldn’t take well to being benched. God save us from teenagers.

It’s not like I would be receiving any backlash for it anyway, no one here seemed to understand the concept of labor laws, some even complained that the younger ones weren’t working at all, even Isamu thought it was weird. Medieval standards were different I supposed.

Nonetheless, I could see things were going well on that front as I passed in front of some of the construction sites, the workers building diligently. Some sneaked some glances at me, working even harder afterwards.

Another advantage of inspecting the workers, nobody wanted me to think they were slacking on the job. 

I smiled when I heard childish laughter in the distance, I walked towards them. 

There were currently seven kids under the age of 12, we kept them in a house next to my own so that we could deal with any emergency quickly. It was quite similar to what I did in Brockton Bay to be honest. Isamu and Naoko took turns taking care of them while one or two women that looked kind enough were trusted to help, I wasn’t going to let just anyone do it after all, the concept of child protection seemed, like most others, lost among the inhabitants of this district. 

When I got close enough, I sensed three young kids playing tag. These three hellions were by far the most rambunctious of the seven. Hiroki, Gaku and Juri, respectively seven, five and six years old. 

Some would say they were adorable little angels that brought joy with them wherever they played.

I would say the puddle of piss they left on my bed as a prank was one of the reasons I was training my spiritual senses so much.

The amount of chores I gave them after that stunt ensured they would think far more than twice next time.

Soon enough they entered my line of sight. It seemed as of now that Gaku was ‘it’, and was chasing Juri while I sensed that Hiroki was hiding in some kind of hole beneath a house. Juri was quite agile for a girl her age and easily jumped over the various supplies lying around and changed directions on a dime.

Juri froze the instant she turned towards me. Gaku, who hadn’t noticed my presence yet, caught her.

“Hah! You’re it!” he said. He was halfway through starting to run when he noticed she hadn’t reacted. “Hey I said you’re it. What are you looking at? Is it-Oh shit.”

They both just stood there, Hiroki crawled out of his hiding place as he knew there was no point hiding from me.

“I hope you did your laundry for today before going out to play.” I said.

“Yeah, uh, totally. It’s all squeaky-clean.” Gaku badly lied. The other two quickly nodded.

“Well then, I will go myself pick it up then. It wouldn’t do for the other kids to get itchy clothes.” I smiled.

“Nonono wait!!!” interrupted Juri, clearly panicking. “It’s-uh-it’s…” she continued, desperately trying to come up for an excuse.

“It’s beneath you!” hurryingly said Hiroki. “It-uh-I’m sure you’re busy enough as it is, we’ll go take care of it. Don’t worry.” A nice save.

How adorable. I showed a genuine smile, somehow it made them even more anxious. It was obvious they had shoved their chores to the side in order to go play, but what child of their age wouldn’t? I’d indulge them.

“Fine. Go take care of that.” I said. “But it better be done before the evening, I will check on it.” I warned in a stern tone. “Understood?”

“Yes ma’am” they said in unison before running off.

I shook my head amusedly, it wasn’t even the right direction.

I had managed a sort-of orphanage when I had been Skitter, but I didn’t directly interact with the kids as I was mostly preoccupied by cape activities while it was running, and I ended up leaving it to Charlotte anyway when I left to join the Wards. I was starting to think I missed out on something. Fortunately Isamu and Naoko didn’t seem to mind the responsibility.

While Isamu tended to get walked over by the kids due to his rather subdued temperament, Naoko was very popular with them. I supposed that they related to each other, they all grew in the same environment after all. 

As for me, I wasn’t all that popular. They clearly were intimidated by me, and who could blame them for being wary of the scary murderous warlord lady? 

Still, I liked playing the stern but caring motherly figure once in a while. I hadn’t known I would enjoy something like that, but I guessed it made sense, During my last two years of life the halfway decent social bonds I made could barely be called as such, and as for my interactions with actual children…

I didn’t think much of what I did to Aster. It had to be done, it was a mercy kill. But...that lack of guilt…

…

Fuck. What was wrong with me? Ruining my good mood by digging up old wounds for no reasons.

I would have liked to go back to my pleasant thoughts about the kids, but it would have just brought me back to that direction, so I forced myself to think of other matters.

I needed to think about the collective power of my forces. We were currently about 50 able fighters, and while food was not a concern since so few of us needed to eat, the fact that it was the case was a problem in and of itself. Ozawa explained that needing food meant that you were spending spiritual energy, which meant that your spiritual power was leaking out, which meant you had reached the capability to exert it to increase your strength. In other words most of my men were as strong as normal human beings, and that would only change with time and experience. Time I didn’t have.

Power grew under duress. It was like a muscle. When you train your muscles, they end up struggling, creating micro-tears. Your muscles are then strengthened so that they would not have trouble next time. Except that this is only the explanation on an evolutionary standpoint, that your body will only grow better muscles if they are needed, as otherwise they’re pointless wastes of resources. In reality, the body doesn’t have that kind of thought process. Stuff goes in, hormone goes out. Nothing more, nothing less.

The soul on the other hand, it’s you, your very subconscious is a part of it and it would know that when you emptied your reservoir of energy to train it, you didn’t actually need it, so it wouldn’t bother growing it. To make your spiritual power grow you need to actually put yourself in danger for your soul to give a shit. 

Ozawa described my explanation as ‘sort of what was happening but not really’ without bothering to go any deeper on the subject, saying that it didn’t really matter since the end result was the same: to get powers you had to put yourself in dangerous fights. 

That explained why I grew so quickly, but it also put me in a bit of a bind. If I needed to find challenges to grow in power, I would find less and less of them that would match me. Thankfully I hadn’t run into that problem yet, mobs of regular people were still enough to be threatening, but it was getting easier. Apparently spiritual power grew on it’s own over time, so I would never reach a hard power cap, but it also meant that past a certain point strength was measured in centuries. Not something I had time to wait for either.

I snickered. My past self would have laughed in the face of such use of terms as ‘soul’ and ‘spiritual energy’, but after learning that honest to god magic was real I had to concede. Souls and ghosts were definitely a thing.

To be fair it wasn’t too hard to accept these revelations on the nature of existence. Cape life trained me to just nod my head at explanations and their implications to only consider the practical side of things. ‘Oh, this thing reverses the polarity of anti-neutrinos to pass beta-photons through subspace in order to create a localized calorific disparity? Yeah, let’s just say it’s a freeze-gun.’

My own feelings on the matter aside, what it all meant was that opposing warlords would have the advantage in both quantity and quality. Since I couldn’t really do anything about the quality problem beyond organizing training sessions and making weapons, I had to worry about the quantity.

The best way to attract people was reputation. Spreading rumors about a new warlord that was actually fair and nice for a change. 

The other solution was to send people around to spread the word of what I was trying to do. That had been what we did in the beginning, but it was dangerous and brought diminishing returns

To be honest, as of right now, there wasn’t much more I could to to bring more people into my fold without making everything unstable.

Then, if I couldn’t shore up my offensive power, I had to play defensively.

I passed next to the execution platform. Dried blood had permeated the wood. It wasn’t something that I liked doing, but it was necessary. We didn’t have any feasible way to hold that many people locked up, and just banishing them held its own kind of issues. Public executions were distasteful, but they would imprint the fear of consequences to those watching. The very least I could do was bearing that task on my own. 

As for the bodies, some suggested we burn them as fuel to save wood, others that we exhibit them on the walls for intimidation. In the end I just put them in a hole in the ground outside the fortifications, the stench near to the pit was horrible and it wasn’t any kind of decent burial, but at least I still had enough standards to not use their corpse as a mere resource. I kept an eye after that on the ones who made these horrid suggestions, more than a few proved a bit too violent for my community.

I wasn’t going to kill anyone that was a bit too ruthless mind you, that wouldn’t leave me with many followers, but I didn’t hesitate to execute them if they proved too unstable. The more bloodthirsty members who didn’t do anything to warrant killing, I sent to defend the gates. There wasn’t exactly a shortage of blood to spill there. 

Ah, there he was. 

A man was tied up to the platform, bruised and battered. His arm was broken and I would have been surprised if he could still see with his right eye, but he was alive. He was the only living prisoner I had. We usually just killed anyone we captured on the spot as we simply didn’t have the means to hold them, but this time I made an exception for as long as it took for me to make up my mind, and I did.

I stood over him, hesitating one last time on the course of action I was going to take. He looked up in defiance. Good, he still had enough of a fight in him. I wouldn’t want him to die on his way after all.

He had been the leader of the Tamer’s latest probing party. The guy had barged in with a dozen men demanding our subservience and a tax of five young girls for the Tamer to enjoy. 

We killed them all of course.

Now, this wasn’t a decision without consequence. Kaku the Tamer was one of the most influential warlords in this section of the district, and as such he would not be taking an affront like this lying down. Thankfully, the leader of the party had been quite strong and survived the fight, which left me with options.

The Tamer’s forces would be coming either way, but I could influence what he would send. He saw me as a new girl, inexperienced, weak, not worth his time, next time he would just send enough subordinates to crush us. I was confident we could win that fight, but we wouldn’t survive a second one.

The other option was reckless and foolish, but if we won it would be decisive, no strike would follow.

I cut down his restraints. He took the opportunity and lunged at me as fast as he could. A summary kick to jaw calmed him down.

I grabbed him by the collar and dragged him behind me towards the gate

Speaking of which, I could hear some fighting in that direction. I arrived at the entrance to my fort in a few minutes. It was the Eternals, I recognized them by that white swastika they painted on their bodies. Fanatics, convinced that their sacred task was to help you leave this transient existence and get you to your next life. They did it by killing you of course. After all, why worry about death when your soul itself was proven eternal?

They were widespread all throughout Zaraki, and while they didn’t have any actual hierarchy or organization, the general climate of hopelessness was a perfect breeding ground for this death cult, especially since all it took to claim yourself as one of them was to carve the kanji of eternity on you body. If there’s no hope in the present, you could at least look forward to your next life I supposed. 

That particular characteristic made them remarkably prone to suicide attacks. Considering how outnumbered the five of these guys were, it seemed it was the case here too. When I entered the scene, the last of them was being put down.

“Everything handled here?” I asked.

“Easily Boss. But I won’t complain if they stopped attacking all the time.” said a gruff man whose name was escaping me. “Ichiro, how many times has it been?”

“It’s the eleventh time this week.” answered said Ichiro.

“We can’t really do anything to stop these attacks.” I said. “But don’t hesitate to ask for supplies if you run out. Has there been any sightings of the Tamer’s men?”

“No, not even a peep.” I sighed in relief. It wasn’t too late.

“Good.” I threw my prisoner on the ground.

I had never been much of a defensive player, I preferred to impose my own pace to the enemy instead of dancing to their own. But I didn’t have much of a choice here, we needed to survive until we were strong enough. 

The first measure I put in place was of course the rampart I built. Well, it was more of a big stake-wall, big enough that no one human sized could just climb it. It had been one of the first things we built and it had been a gigantic pain in the ass. Putting it in place took the better part of a month, and that it took such a short time was a testament to how much work and effort was put into it. I wasn’t expecting it to stop the stronger people from just going through the wall, but at least the majority of people would have to try passing through the gate. A well defended gate.

But that alone wouldn’t be enough. The best way to be defensive, was to simply not be attacked. How would I do that? By proving I was strong enough to not be worth attacking. I needed to prove myself, and weathering small probing parties from other warlords wasn’t enough. I needed something else. To become untouchable I had to prove it. I had had to beat the strongest guy around and have proof.

If I failed, I would die, but if I did nothing I would be trapped under some brute’s thumb for years. To me death was preferable. I already died once anyway. Maybe it was callous of me, after all my fate will be my people’s. I didn’t like how similar it sounded to these religious nut-jobs spiel either, but wouldn’t it all have been pointless if I let myself be bullied into submission?

No.

I was going to build a bastion of safety in a place devoid of it. If my fort lost these traits, I might as well raze it to the ground. 

I wouldn’t submit. I wouldn’t let that bastard send waves after waves of men on our walls until we broke. I would make sure to have the opportunity to end it right then and there.

I would send him a message.

“Alright.” I said as I crouched to his level. “I’m going to let you go.” The man only grew more worried at that. Good on him for being smart enough to not take my words at face value. “But as you can guess, you won’t be coming back empty handed.” 

I grabbed his hand, and took my knife. I stabbed. The knife went through two fingers as if they were butter, severing them off completely. I picked them up as the man clutched his injured hand and groaned in barely suppressed pain. I had considered cutting his whole hand off, but I was afraid he would just die of blood loss.

Once he started paying attention to me again, I pud his own fingers in his arms and continued “You can tell him that the next time he wants something to fuck, he can just put these up his ass.” 

I threw him outside and watched as he shambled away with his severed appendages.

“Ichiro, watch him and make sure he doesn’t die on his way.” I ordered. He nodded and went after the man.

Good. Now I was certain the Tamer would come in person to try and put me in my place. He would come, and give me the opportunity to end the threat that he was right then and there.

And if he happened to bring with him that little trophy he was rumored to have, then all the better.


End file.
